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Van Gogh in Japan goes south
BY JEFFREY GANTZ
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Van Gogh in Japan
By R.L. Lane. Directed by R.L. Lane. Set by Susan Zeeman Rogers. Costumes by Jacqueline Dalley. Lighting by Scott Pinkney. Original music by Dewey Dalley. With Seth Kanor, Scott Severance, Joe Pacheco, Mara Sidmore, Faith Justice, Seth Compton, Michaela Lipsey, Robert Bonotto, and Steven Barkhimer. Presented by the Nora Theatre at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through March 28.
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Van Gogh in Japan? The press release for this play by New Repertory Theatre founder R.L. Lane that’s getting its world premiere from the Nora Theatre Company could have you envisioning a work about Vincent’s "lost years" in Tokyo, or at least one that argues he owed everything he did to Hiroshige. The good news is that Lane’s Japan is an intelligently chosen metaphor for Vincent’s long-sought artistic paradise; the artist, who did execute copies of three Japanese woodcuts while in Paris in 1887, was perfectly willing to find Japan in Arles. The bad news is that Van Gogh in Japan doesn’t locate its subject there or anywhere else; the script is edifying in places but has little new to tell us about one of Western civilization best-known artists. Part of Lane’s problem is his time frame, which hopscotches from Vincent’s landing on art-dealer brother Theo’s Parisian doorstep in 1886 to his death in Auvers in 1890 and the discussion of same between fellow artists Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard in a Parisian café shortly thereafter: at just over two hours (not counting the one intermission), the play feels long, yet its 10 sections — each named after one of the painter’s works — don’t begin to deal with the complexities of Van Gogh’s life or his art. Matters get off to a promising start as an unwilling Theo goes to meet his just-arrived brother in the Louvre, where Vincent talks excitedly of Japan and why his potato eaters have long arms while presenting Theo with a fish he’s brought from Antwerp. We see Vincent in Theo’s apartment drawing Lisette, a barely draped model who asks him about his Dutch-prostitute model Sien and flirts a little; then he and Lisette are out in the country, where the bad dialogue starts up ("How could I marry a whore?" "How could I marry a failure?") as she packs up the picnic basket and packs in the relationship. Edgar Degas drops in after the failed show at the Boulevard de Clichy, and he and Vincent play a kind of Russian roulette; then it’s on to the Gare du Midi, where Theo and Émile and housekeeper Sophie see Vincent off to Marseille with a bottle and a gaiety of spirit that Vincent’s intensity turns sour. Ignoring Vincent’s arrival in Arles, the second act goes straight to Christmas 1888: Vincent has just cut off part of his ear and is bleeding all over while the postman Roulin brings his paintings (including the 1889 Starry Night) to the hospital and Gauguin expounds on the stinking studio of the south. Cut to Saint-Rémy (an unctuous Dr. Peyron reciting platitudes), Paris (Vincent back with Theo and exchanging clichés with Émile), Auvers (Vincent shooting himself), and Paris (Gauguin explaining to Bernard why he didn’t leave Pont-Aven — actually Le Pouldu — to attend the funeral, which took place the day after Vincent died, probably before Gauguin learned he was dead). Think of it as Don McLean’s "Vincent" with better lyrics. The Nora production benefits from Susan Zeeman Rogers’s canvas-as-floor set (with Van Gogh paintings as backdrop), Jacqueline Dalley’s unobtrusive period costumes, and Dewey Dalley’s similarly unobtrusive scene-connecting café music (with snatches of a Chopin nocturne and waltz), but the reason to see it is Seth Kanor, who imbues Vincent not only with technical expertise (credit Lane, who understands that his subject was no idiot savant) but with an apt degree of religious fanaticism and not the slightest ability to distinguish love from sex. Joe Pacheco’s Hal Linden–like Theo is almost too grounded and reassuring a foil; Theo expresses concern over his "advanced bronchitis" without any hint of the depression that sent him to an asylum months after his brother died. Faith Justice is a maternal ideal as Vincent’s caregivers in Paris, Arles, and Saint-Rémy; Mara Sidmore is saucy enough as Lisette but modern-lite as a nun and Theo’s Dutch wife. Robert Bonotto does a lot of ranting as both Degas and hospital handyman Henri; his Degas is intriguing but a luxury in a play that’s supposed to be about Van Gogh. Indeed, the farther Lane strays from his ostensible subject, the less persuasive his characters become: though Steven Barkhimer makes a plausible gruff stereotype out of Roulin, Seth Compton is hopelessly callow as Bernard, and Scott Severance’s teddy-bear Gauguin would be a breakfast snack for Anthony Quinn. In that last scene, Gauguin wonders whether Tahiti isn’t his Japan, in the process both blanding out the play’s title metaphor and inviting unfavorable comparison with the Museum of Fine Arts’ concurrent "Gauguin Tahiti" show.
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