The Browning Version

The Browning Version

At Pacific Resident Theatre

Reviewed by Madeleine Shaner

November 05, 2009

PHOTO CREDIT

Vitor Martins

Terence Rattigan's 1948 script falls into the tradition of the British well-made play, a category that spreads over theater history as a combined craft and art that happily satisfies American tastes by virtue of its emotional cohesion and in spite of its very British context.

Bruce French gives a powerhouse performance as brilliant classical scholar Andrew Crocker-Harris, whose promise has failed him. He is now a despised teacher in a British public (that's private) school in the south of England. The boys, privileged scions of wealthy families, have little or no interest in ancient Greek drama and no patience with the rigid classicist. Neither has Crocker-Harris' errant wife, Millie (a brilliantly brittle Sally Smythe), who snobbily hopes for the headmastership for her stolid husband, and the house that goes with it, even while she's playing a dangerous game with the much younger, popular science teacher, Frank Hunter (smooth and charming Michael Balsley).

John Taplow (an honest performance by Justin Preston), a promising student with no ax to grind, becomes an unwilling source of rude feedback on Crocker-Harris' popularity rating among the student body, giving Millie devastating ammunition to undercut any faith the beaten-down professor has in himself, his profession, his scholarship, his marriage, and his slim hopes for a subsistence job upon his forced retirement.

This is an outstanding play about marriage, relationships, academics, and the agonizing reticence that was a hallmark of British civility. It may be considered an old-fashioned play, but there's nothing outdated about the often devastating, always crucial relationships between partners, lovers, students and teachers, and the sound of the future knocking at the door of the established past and finding it not at home.

The actors give amazing performances, under Marilyn Fox's elegant direction, including the superb Orson Bean as the unctuous headmaster and Michael Redfield and Caitlin Beitel as the newlywed Gilberts, who are itching to take over the Crocker-Harris' position and flat. Good luck to them.

Presented by and at Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd. Venice. Oct. 29–Dec. 20. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (Dark Nov. 12 and 26 and Dec. 10.) (310) 822-8392. www.pacificresidenttheatre.com.