Matisse and his nurse debate art, God
Can a humble French nun convert a lifelong atheist artist into changing his theological views?
That is the perplexing question left hanging in the air at the end of the play “The Color of Light,” now enjoying a short run at the Schoolhouse Theater in nearby Croton Falls, N.Y.
The playwright Jesse Kornbluth doesn’t answer the question for his protagonist, the artist Henri Matisse. You feel as if you are in a philosophy class annoyed at Socrates, who asked too many questions and left his students pondering not only what to answer but how to answer without antagonizing the master. Kornbluth takes the history of Matisse, his young nurse Monique Bourgeois, and
the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, France, and thrusts it onto the stage. He plays the trajectory of the story faithfully, from the moment of the two meeting to the artist’s death. There is no new startling revelation in the play.
“I was telling the story of a secret hidden in plain sight,” says Kornbluth of his first play.
The story traces the bond forged by two very different people: a frail, seventy-something postimpressionism artist set in his ways and beliefs, and a young, devout woman just barely past twenty whom he hires as his nurse.
Monique, who gradually learns to appreciate Matisse’s fascination with color, cares for him with kindness and love.
In his role as Matisse, awardwinning actor Tim Jerome uncannily looks like Matisse at this stage of the artist’s life and Dominique Salerno as Monique looks like the real young nurse. From the first moments that they meet, Matisse and Monique engage in a metaphysical discussion of a fundamental question: Is there a god? Monique prays to Jesus, Matisse prays to his soul. Despite their polar opposite beliefs, a filial bond develops between them.
Confined to a bed and a wheel chair following surgery, Matisse now begins to heal. At one point, he leaves the scene in a wheel chair and then re-enters walking without even the support of a cane.
It seems natural particularly since there was no reaction to this very sudden transition. Everything seems blissful until Monique announces she is entering the convent. Matisse is furious and their bond is shattered.
Several years later, the two coincidentally find themselves in a small town, Vence, where Monique, now Sister Jacques-Marie, lives with her Dominican order of nuns. Matisse has embarked on a new phase of his art: using boldcolored cut-outs in his work. Sister re-enters his life to ask a favor: Could he please help her design a window that would brighten the miserable garage the nuns are using as a chapel.
Matisse is so overjoyed at seeing Sister that he quickly volunteers to design a new chapel suffused with light and with color, particularly blue which he always favored.
Of course, there were obstacles along the way, not the least of which was the hostile reception accorded to Matisse by the closeminded Dominican superior. Other characters enter the two-act play, which runs about two hours under the direction of Bram Lewis. There’s Pablo Picasso, excited for his friend who has embarked on what Matisse calls his masterpiece. There’s the servant Lydia who provides moments of comic relief and there’s a priest for good measure. The staging and lighting at the Schoolhouse Theater’s production captures mood and moment flush with color and spontaneity. Paintings by Matisse are on the walls, as if in a gallery. There are canvases on the floor and on an easel. A blue-impressionistic panel circumnavigates the room at the top of the walls. This is a Frenchfarmhouse atelier: studio in a bedroom/living/kitchen space.
Kornbluth embroiders his scenes with music, such as when a haunting “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” sung by Edith Piaf, sums up Matisse’s credo: He doesn’t regret the past, he looks to the future. Later, a happy Lydia plays a recording of a Chopin piece and dances. Grating strings sting at other moments. Although the Matisse character often reflects on God, we don’t know if this atheist changes his beliefs at the end. It’s left to the audience to debate.
Kornbluth’s labyrinth of a mind wanders into topics as mundane as cookbooks to explorations of the life of Warhol and Michael Milken. For the last 40 years or so, he has been a a journalist, book author and screenwriter. He says that writing permeates his consciousness to such a degree that it sometimes feels to him like “channeling.” In writing the play, he says, that happened all the time.
“The play asks ‘Are our lives a series of random events and coincidences, or do we have a destiny?’ I’m undecided, but writing this play felt completely like destiny. When I was stuck, I looked to the sky and said, ‘I can’t do this. Please help me.’ And then my hand was held.”
For his next adventure, Kornbluth will devote his time to writing a book that he feels will lead down the yellow-brick road to a career high. He’s at a good junction in his much-quilted life.
“I’m chilled,” he says.