Neil LaBute and an Unheroically Human
Thought
by Julie Salamon
It wasn't that he didn't believe in heroes. Neil LaBute was fully aware
that the days and weeks after Sept. 11 last year were a time of great
selflessness for many people. But he also suspected that not everyone was
rescuing, rebuilding or performing acts of charity.
In fact, he knew it, having had some less than noble thoughts himself.
When the World Trade Center was attacked, the playwright was in Chicago,
planning to be back in New York on Sept. 13 to begin rehearsals of a new play,
"The Shape of Things." With flights canceled, he had to take the
train, stretching a 2-hour trip into 21 hours. He may have felt horrified at the
national tragedy, and scared, and grateful to be alive, but only one thought
registered: "This is inconvenient."
Even then he realized that his feeling of irritation, which increased as the
trip dragged on, was not an appropriate reaction. "I remember thinking,
`Ooh, that's not a very good thought to have,' " he said in a recent
interview. "I knew it wasn't right, but the thought had already come
out."
Most people might feel inclined to suppress the memory. Mr. LaBute, who
specializes in nasty, has transformed his petty thought into a tough-minded play
whose ideas are highly provocative, even by its author's own prickly standards.
"The Mercy Seat," which opens on Wednesday at the Acorn Theater in New
York, takes place on Sept. 12, as a married man named Ben (also a father) and
his mistress, Abby (also his boss), debate their future. The day before, on his
way to an early meeting at the World Trade Center, Ben had been diverted to
Abby's nearby apartment. When the planes crashed into the towers, the lovers
were engaged in oral sex. Now, presuming his wife and children think he's dead,
Ben sees an opportunity to start a new life. Abby's revulsion leads to a bitter
dissection of their relationship — shades of "Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?" — only the backdrop isn't a dinner party; it's ground zero. The
cynicism can seem breathtaking but weirdly heartening, a sign that we haven't
been pummeled, politically and emotionally, into taking a uniform view of that
terrible moment and its meaning.
Apart from its value as theater, "The Mercy Seat" is part of a
perceptible shift in mood toward Sept. 11 among purveyors of culture. Until now,
the event has been treated primarily in a commemorative way, in a barrage of
documentaries and books. Yet Mr. LaBute's play, which he is also directing, is
one indication that ground zero is no longer exempt from astringent artistic
examination. The professionals are catching up with the amateurs, who began
circulating ghoulishly playful urban myths — mostly on the Internet — almost
immediately after the initial shock, including one story about an adulterous
couple that resembled the bare bones of Mr. LaBute's plot. ("I've heard
urban legends since I wrote it about the guy who was at his girlfriend's house
when it happened," Mr. LaBute said.)
It's no accident that one of the two stars of "The Mercy Seat" is
Sigourney Weaver. Ms. Weaver also performed in one of the first post-attack
theater pieces, "The Guys," a more familiar and almost opposite
response to Sept. 11. That play, which will soon be released as a film (also
starring Ms. Weaver), was an emotional homage to firefighters who died in the
rescue operation. The actress played a writer, shaken by the events, who takes
solace in helping a fire chief write eulogies for the men he lost. She draws him
out to reveal the best in them. "The Guys" has been performed at the
Flea Theater in Lower Manhattan (where it is closing on Friday) since three
months after the attacks. The play, by Anne Nelson, was not intended to
deconstruct the human condition so much as to help a community respond to the
horrific events it had witnessed.
In "The Mercy Seat," Ms. Weaver portrays a high-powered woman who
crumbles as the chaos outside impels her to confront the ugliness within —
within herself, her lover, their relationship. "The irony was not lost on
me," Mr. LaBute said of his desire to cast Ms. Weaver. "She will have
had the lead in the two plays that are most directly about that day, and they
are extremely different takes on that time. I wouldn't presume to think that
this will inform the way people watch the play, but it is amazing for her to
have made that journey."
Ms. Weaver discussed that journey in an interview at the Acorn on Theater Row,
at which she was joined by her co-star, Liev Schreiber, during a break in
rehearsal. Both looked exhausted. The play requires almost a nonstop output of
high-octane emotion, whose venom level was startling to these gifted and
experienced actors. (Even the humor, and there is more than you would think,
springs from bitter truths and suppositions.) "It takes its toll," Ms.
Weaver said. "It's hard to be that rough to each other, it's hard to be
those characters, and it's hard to be that rough to the world situation."
Ms. Weaver said she had been shocked when she first read the play. "That
people in the daze of Sept. 12 could make remarks like that was so unthinkable
to me," she said. "They were so clearly in their own selfish world.
But I must say, as well as shocking, it was funny. And necessary. As if the
pendulum had to swing back to the other direction. My character is an
adulteress, a ruthless businesswoman, but she does the right thing in the end.
We've been couching all this in good and evil, black and white, but people come
in shades of gray."
For Mr. Schreiber, playing the narcissistic Ben may seem like part of a
continuum. The actor has been lauded for his audacious, idiosyncratic portrayals
of all kinds of characters, on stage and screen, in a range extending from
Shakespeare to "Scream" (the original movie and its two sequels). But
he hadn't been a LaBute fan. In fact, he said, "The first Neil LaBute play
I saw I thought: `This guy's a jerk. I'm not interested in this writer. I think
he's inhumane.' "
Mr. Schreiber's reaction to Mr. LaBute isn't uncommon. The playwright has
produced work that has been unflinchingly cruel in its devastating assumptions
about human baseness and hypocrisy. Mr. Schreiber's character, Ben, is a classic
LaBute type, immersed in self-interest. When Abby presses him to react to the
horror a few blocks away, he angrily tells her he understands the big picture.
"This is a national disaster, yes . . . until the next time the Yankees win
the pennant, then we'll all move on from there."
Mr. Schreiber said he was mesmerized by the playwright's willingness to probe
the nonheroic feelings that disaster can inspire. "It's much easier to be
antiseptic, to remember it in a clean way, in a beautiful way, to wrap it up in
a nice package and put it away," he said. "It makes it easier to move
on. But we have very complicated and disturbing feelings around loss and grief
and terror. To address those issues and feelings head on in all of their ugly
and naked glory helps us to process it, to deal with it better the next time we
confront it."
Both he and Ms. Weaver gave the impression of being on a mission — and they
conveyed that impression with the special force of people who are very
articulate, very intelligent and very tall (she is 5 feet 11 and he is 6 feet
3). They want to use the theater — and this play, presented by MCC Theater, in
particular — to counteract what they call the mythology and cant that has
shrouded the attacks, and to supplement the genuine mourning.
"We've had so much, deservedly so, about those men and women who were lost,
and their families, and everyone respects that," Ms. Weaver said. "But
there's a need for this. A lot of people feel unconnected because they can't
find themselves in this picture. Give them that spectrum! I think it would be
very — in an odd way — reassuring to have this out there. Not that it's
comfortable or even enjoyable, but it's a more human way of seeing people."
Yet they both realize that the play could be regarded as not just offensive but
wounding, especially to those directly affected. "I'm just hoping those
people won't come," said Ms. Weaver, after a deep sigh. "I think this
is not the right time for someone who lost someone. I've told people not to
come."
Mr. Schreiber seemed to agree. "I'm scared," he said. "I don't
think I've been in a place in my life or my career where things are as sensitive
as they are in this play. It makes me question all the foundations of my
training and belief and faith. I completely respect people's decision to stay
away from things that will be painful to them. This is a play for people who are
hearty of spirit."
Back to Top
Newsday
(December
15, 2002)
A 9/11 Anti-hero
by Blake Green
Anyone interested in trendy home design knows the setting: a
downtown loft - brick-walled, stylishly appointed, with a kitchen to die for
(Wolf range, Sub-Zero fridge). Nor is the situation unfamiliar: an affair that
long ago stumbled into the when-are-you-finally-going-to-leave-your-wife?
morass.
But there's a wrinkle: He's younger, she's his boss; they work in the
neighborhood. And a real - prepare to gasp - twist: The date is Sept. 12, 2001.
The guy's family hasn't heard from him since the Twin Towers fell; he's pretty
much decided they won't.
It's at this point that the audience meets Abby, played by Sigourney Weaver, and
Ben, played by Liev Schreiber, the glitzy cast of "The Mercy Seat,"
Neil LaBute's latest spin on morality in immoral times (or, maybe, the reverse)
that opens Wednesday at Off-Broadway's Acorn Theatre. As always in LaBute's film
and stage work, at the core there's the relationship - and this one is a doozy.
Shortly after the terrorist tragedy, the forever-edgy LaBute, an ample,
bespectacled man whose hairstyle truly defines "a mess of curls," says
he found himself on an airplane - an act itself thought-provoking in those
apocalyptic days - and began "thinking about what if someone were to use
that event for selfish gain rather than be moved to selflessness?"
He was off and writing.
Around that same time, Weaver, best known as a movie star whose roles have
included the "Alien" and "Ghostbusters" films, was appearing
in another play featuring a couple also caught up in the events of 9/11 - only
on what LaBute refers to as "the other side of the spectrum."
In "The Guys," the willowy actress created the role of a writer who
helps the fire department captain compose touching eulogies to his dead men.
That long-running show with its revolving cast of big-name stars will close Dec.
20. (Weaver also is in the movie version, scheduled to open in New York in
January.)
LaBute, however, hadn't seen the 53-year-old Weaver onstage; rather, it was her
film work that convinced him "she represented the strong type I imagined
Abby would be." Nor, for that matter, had he ever seen "The
Guys," the first of what has turned out to be numerous performance pieces
spinning off Sept. 11. What inspired him to write "The Mercy Seat," he
says, "was the dramatic notion that the day afforded one an anonymity. A
body could easily disappear."
This is precisely what Ben is considering doing, taking what he believes is the
easy route, rather than dumping his wife and two daughters, who would now view
him as a fallen hero rather than a heel. "An escape with dignity,"
says LaBute, meaning exactly the opposite in the scathing snapshot of Ben's soul
that he affords the audience. Taking the easy road "is the greatest crime
of all," says the playwright, who also directs the production.
"The fact he believes he can reinvent himself is itself pretty
stunning," Schreiber, who's 36, says of his flawed character. It's a part,
he admits, his agent advised him not to take. "because he's a completely
hopeless guy."
LaBute wanted Schreiber for the role because the respected character actor
"brought a real sturdiness, a manliness to a character I find quite weak.
And he has a virile quality; their relationship has to be based on something
pretty physical." He is also taller than the almost 6-foot Weaver.
For his own part, Schreiber, like Weaver, was drawn to the rhythm of the play's
language, which he compares to the classics, adding that "Ben totally
reminds me of Edmund," the crafty bastard son ("a most toad-spotted
traitor") in "King Lear," one of Shakespeare's plays he has yet
to tackle.
Also, "there's a brilliant quality to Neil's stuff that I've thought
bordered on the inhumane, being almost dismissive of a character, and, as an
actor, you want to work very hard to reverse that.
"In getting to know [LaBute] I've realized he's a remarkably sweet person,
a Mormon, which he takes very seriously," Schreiber says. "The
questions of morality and faith are very real for him, unusual in this day and
age. For someone to deal with this in a contemporary way is very exciting; you
realize you have to go to extremes to test and explore." In
"Betrayal," Schreiber's last Broadway appearance, his character also
was involved in an extramarital affair.
Just as in 1999's controversial "bash, latter-day plays" the
playwright enjoyed putting Calista Flockhart, television's lovable "Ally
McBeal," into startling roles "that ultimately made the audience
recoil," LaBute admits to "kind of having enjoyed" Weaver's
flip-side identification with "The Guys." "What a journey it must
have been for her."
For Abby, he points out, "is not a flattering portrait. She's an enabler,
not with disregard for the events of that day but ready to get back to the messy
business of living after realizing she's not in peril."
"Coming at it from such a different perspective," says Weaver, was one
the intriguing things about "The Mercy Seat." She felt, as a lifelong
New Yorker, "at this point the idea of this guy using something that means
so much to all of us in his own weird little way, for his own purposes, was so
shocking, so provocative. This whole idea of 'what New Yorkers are like' that's
been thrown up in the air for the last year, this whole rigamarole about whether
we're better, I've thought was ridiculous."
As an actress, she views Abby as "a great role: wickedly funny, very smart,
very powerful and at the same time incredibly vulnerable. I'm not as much a,
pardon the expression, --- kicker as she is, and this is exciting. None of this
has anything to do with 'The Guys,' except that in my heart of hearts I've hoped
no one who's lost anyone would come and see it. That could be offensive."
If anyone has come, she hasn't been aware of it. Unlike the case with "The
Guys," where the actors sometimes were met by audible sobs, audiences so
far seem to have been "reacting more to the already damaged
relationship" of the pair, "wondering 'When is the light bulb going to
go on in her head?'" than to anything that's happened beyond the loft's
dust-covered windows.
"The play is very intellectually demanding," says Weaver, "but
they're also like two animals, two creatures circling each other. There's so
much at stake." Ironically, another older woman/younger man relationship
was the subject of "Tadpole," Weaver's latest movie, and, as she
points out, her husband, Jim Simpson, artistic director of Off-Off Broadway's
Flea Theater (which produces "The Guys"), "is a bit younger than
I."
In the end, compassion is what "The Mercy Seat" is all about - or at
least its being in short supply. The title is a religious reference LaBute says
he's "been bandying around for years."
"But without mercy - and hope - there is no play," says Schreiber.
"In the context of 9/11, that's very appropriate."
Back to Top
The Mercy Seat is a well-crafted,
beautifully-played powerful drama from controversial playwright/director Neil
LaBute (The Shape of Things), who is equally known as a screenwriter (In
The Company of Men) and film director (Nurse Betty). It stars Liev
Schreiber and Sigourney Weaver as a couple having a long-standing affair, set in
her condo apartment on Sept. 12th, 2001, the day after he was supposed to be at
work in the World Trade Center. "It's a relationship play, a relationship
at a crossroads, forced into a place of decision-making by a catastrophic
event," LaBute says. "There is the overlay of 9/11 on the piece, which
makes the general conceit of the play 'can someone be selfish at a time of
selflessness?" He adds, "It's about people who are so locked into the
moment of their own that they see what happened outside as a backdrop. The male
character is not allowing the emotional effect of 9/11 to seep in -- he sees it
only in regards to his own situation." The Mercy Seat, Acorn Theatre
at Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St., (212) 279-4200. Previews Nov. 26, opens Dec.
18-Jan. 12. Tues., 7:30 p.m.; Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed. & Sat. mats., 2:30
p.m. No shows Dec. 24th & 25th, and dates and times vary after that. $50.
Back to Top
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