Does maintaining the status quo damage integrity of the theater scene?
After seeing “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps,” the summer thriller parody at the Alley Theatre I looked up A.O. Scott’s review of “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” in which the New York Times film critic wrestles with why people continue to see Michael Bay movies.
“Who are these movies for?” Scott wrote. “This one, like its predecessors, is likely to make a lot of money all over the world, but that only makes the matter more puzzling.”
Puzzling is right. Critics have always done a poor job figuring out why everyone else likes something they don’t.
One manifestation of the highbrow scold, as a destroyer of careers and joy, can be seen in the 2014 film “Birdman,” in which a critic says to an actor, with glee, “I’m going to kill your play.” Scott wrestled with this supposed identity of the critic in his selfquestioning book “Better Living Through Criticism.” In it, he explained his role this way: “The origin of criticism lies in an innocent, heartfelt kind of question, one that is far from simple and that carries enormous risk: Did you feel that? Was it good for you? Tell the truth.”
I don’t want to kill “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.” I just want to be honest about it.
Did I feel it? No, I felt embarrassed by it.
Was it good for me? It was both excellent entertainment and a confusing, isolating experience in which I wondered if I was out of touch with what audiences really want — what art wants to be, and can be, in a city characterized by growth and opportunity.
The truth? “39 Steps” is a finely executed production. Todd Waite is perfect as Richard Hannay, a man who goes on the run after a dame gets murdered in his apartment by a secret society. Elizabeth Bunch is broad and showy as a variety of women with bad European accents, and she makes a typical Hitchcockian female role — in other words a bad female role — work through pathos, agency and complexity. Bruce Warren and Mark Price fill in as newspaper boys, politicians, train riders, policemen and so on in an homage to the screwball comedy of early cinema. I could watch these people do anything.
I could also watch these people do anything else. When it comes to acting and staging, “39 Steps” is a technical home run, but it’s a cynic’s piece of art, really. It draws the contemporary theater scene into a dangerously lazy mindset. It suggests that brainlessness sells and must be used to subsidize works such as “Describe the Night,” the upcoming Rajiv Joseph world premiere at the Alley, which I predict will end up as an important Broadway play for both its potent storytelling and thematic timeliness — a reaction to political turmoil that will last longer in New York than “1984,” “Building the Wall,” or “Julius Caesar.” But most people I talk to don’t even know “Describe the Night,” a potentially historic theatrical event coming up in September.
“39 Steps,” meanwhile, keeps chugging along.
It’s not that I don’t like the show. Judged out of context, it’s harmless. The meta-theatrical jokes and references to Hitchcock films add an extra element for those wanting more than a movie adaptation. Perhaps it’s even a tonic for audiences seeking mental refuge and a source of money for the Alley to invest in developing new voices (which it absolutely is, with several world premieres this upcoming season).
But what is its true cost? What doesn’t grow when works like “39 Steps” maintain the status quo? What happens to the spirit when it envelops itself in safety? And who is not on the stage? The answer to the last question exists in the Kilroys List, a living compendium of contemporary works by female authors, and the Jubilee Initiative, which asks theaters to produce only works by women and minorities in the 2020-21 season.
This is not a moment, to be clear, in which a critic’s artistic or political sensibilities are offended. No, this is an arts advocate telling you he is afraid of the worrying implications of the Alley’s summer programming. I chose not to believe that most people want “39 Steps” and plays like it, nor to believe that mainstream must mean museumlike and exclusionary.
I chose, instead, to believe in this strange, elusive, urgent, risky and diverse art form we call theater.