The melancholy dynamo: Deceased Artiste Robin Williams (part 1 of two)

When Robin Williams burst on the scene, I was a young comedy fan who was ready to be blown away by his energy and insane verbal skills. My friends and I made a pilgrimage to the Unique Warehouse on Broadway in the NYU section of the Village (now ever-expanding…) to buy the suspenders that Robin wore on Mork and Mindy — yes, I was that big of a comedy geek and a fan for his frantic, hyper-kinetic mode of standup comedy.

I had two surprises lying in wait: the first was that Mork and Mindy came back for its second season and was really, really unfunny. I’ve only seen a few shows descend in quality that quickly, and in those cases it was because key writers or entire writing staffs were replaced (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; In Living Color). The damned thing just was nearly impossible to sit through. The writing seemed different, but also the “costar” was now the full-out star, new characters were introduced that dragged the show down, and the kooky sense of humor that punctuated the show was now wall-to-wall, except when mawkish messages were being imparted.

The second surprise was the better one, and the reason I’m writing this blog entry. It also led to me retaining an interest in Williams’ work, even when I wasn’t a fan of his standup anymore (by the early Eighties, it had become a mess of coke-fueled hyper-energy that couldn’t help but wear down the viewer).

The surprise was The World According to Garp (1982), in which super-mega-hyper Robin was quiet, gentle, and gave an incredibly moving performance. It didn’t hurt that George Roy Hill was a wildly underrated director whose adaptations of novels made you want to read the books his films were based on — surely a triumph for any director.

It was a revelation to see Williams give such a grounded, rational, human performance in Garp that I realized I’d have to keep track of what he did as an actor in the movies. This was, mind you, just at the point when for me his standup became unendurably manic — there is no trace of it online, but he was nothing less than obnoxious on a 1988 cable special called An All-Star Toast to the Improv.

On that special six comedians sit on stools, and each does his act in turn. Four of the other comedians — Robert Klein, Richard Lewis, Paul Rodriguez, and Billy Crystal — have their sets ruined by Robin, who seems clearly coked outta his brain (I know, I know — he said he was clean as a whistle after '83, but he really does seem to be on *something*, if only caffeine, on the Improv special). He does physical humor (he did have a predilection for dick jokes) and shouts out lines while the other comedians are on.

Thankfully, Martin Mull acknowledged the situation directly by saying “I don’t blame you, Robin — I blame the man who gave you the shot backstage.” He also pointed to Robin while he was ad-libbing on his stool and declared “here is where your March of Dimes dollars go, folks….”

So, while Robin’s comedy act was turning aggressive, obnoxious, and — the single best word for a lot of his hyperactive behavior — desperate, his acting showed him to be an artist and entertainer capable of nuance and depth. (His TV interviews found him bouncing between the two poles, but constantly returning to “hyper”-land.)

There were both good and bad films in the Eighties and Nineties, peaks and lows in his work. Since he died, much emphasis has been put on the period in which he was fully sober — 1983–2003 — and I find it interesting that he did a lot of his best work during this period, but fell into a ditch of really lousy movies after he fell off the wagon. He also started making the kind of really mawkish family-friendly dramas that became one of his lamest (and laziest, given his talent) legacies.

Clearly he was a compulsive workaholic who gave everything (including his health and, at times, his sanity) to both his standup and his acting. The problem clearly became that he was working in too many movies — starring in some, doing voices-work for others, and making guest-star appearances in a whole other batch of films.

In one of the most interesting, and saddest, interviews he did back in 2009 for The Guardian, he acknowledged this fact: "In one two-year period I made eight movies. At one point the joke was that there's a movie out without you in it. You have this idea that you'd better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous. And then you realize, no, actually if you take a break people might be more interested in you.”

So what I want to do here is celebrate his great movie work, which unfortunately got buried in amongst the bad comedies and dramas, his heart-tugging family stuff, the many cartoons, the guest-starring silliness, and the many, many (many!) movies Robin made over the past three decades.

Unfortunately the 10-15 most brilliant of his films nearly got buried under an avalanche of mediocrities, and the critically lauded films we were supposed love, like Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, and, god forbid, The Birdcage — the first three are very good movies, but have been lionized ad infinitum.

*****

Before I commence in salutin’, I should of course address the nature of his death and how, very sadly, it will color the way his work is viewed from this point on (except to children, who will watch his kiddie stuff without knowing he’s the “sad clown who killed himself”). I discussed the Internet-as-kangaroo-court in my piece on Philip Seymour Hoffman — who coincidentally appeared with Robin in one of the ones I haven’t yet brought myself to watch, Patch Adams (the kind of a film that Jerry Lewis no doubt would’ve died to have made in his “Total Filmmaker” phase).

Reaction to Philip Seymour’s death included a great degree of Internet anger (read: self-righteous indignation from a person who won’t sign his own name) against him for having “abandoned” his kids. Robin, too, had three children he left behind, but perhaps it was that Williams was a constant presence in everyone’s life for three decades (read: his sudden death inspired memories of our youth watching him on TV and onscreen).

Perhaps it was also that Williams’ suicide was indeed a suicide, decisively, and was caused by depression. Whatever the case was, there seemed to be far fewer idiots coming down on him for having done something “bad” — Shephard Smith and Rush Limbaugh being two of the major exceptions.

What links the two together (besides, god fucking forbid, Patch Adams) is that both were haunted men and that fed into their performances. Philip Seymour was a chameleon who could work at any level (starring, supporting, cameo) in a film, whereas Robin began his film career (with Altman's Popeye) as a star performer and stayed at that level for the next three decades — even when he was giving a thoroughly genuine subdued performance, as in Garp or Awakenings, he took centerstage, if only because he had star billing and the lion’s share of screen time.

There also was a rush of surprise surrounding Robin’s death, since most people instantly identified him with his comedy persona: boundless energy, constant invention, different voices for each idea. That side of him did wear me down — as has been the case with every high-energy comedian, it’s a case of love ‘em or leave ‘em.

Those who were familiar with his best moments as an actor immediately flashed on the most touching moments where, inevitably, his characters confronted death, from Garp to What Dreams May Come (1998) to the great dark comedy World’s Greatest Dad (2009). He battled depression for many years, and that came through in his best performances (as with Philip Seymour). To be able to deliver such moments of truth, one has to tap into the saddest parts of one’s existence.

Robin’s utterly eager/somewhat desperate comic persona betrayed some of the sadness (if only because he was constantly trying to make people laugh, almost compulsively), whereas his acting utilized the sadness and then — based on the competence of the scripter in question — overcame it. 

Coming up in part two: a “hit list” of Williams' best performances that does not include the box-office sensations (and the Oscar winner).

On the 'vulgarization' of Genet's 'The Maids'

Isabelle Huppert can do wrong. Well, she can appear (and has) in films that aren't quite up to her standard of quality from time to time, but even in those she has given nuanced, detailed performances, making the films at least worth checking out, if not remembering. The notion of her performing in a production of Genet's classic The Maids is thus kind of a dream come true: the perfect actress meets the perfect role (that of Solange, the elder sister).

But the production of the play created at the Sydney Theatre Company that is now being staged in NYC at City Center is an “updating” with a grand new physical presentation and dialogue that has been vulgarized (plenty of fucks and cunts can be heard in the dialogue) and updated to the 21st–century with pop culture references to match (among them, a namecheck of designer Alexander McQueen and a dumb-ass interpolation of “Hi-Ho” from the Disney Snow White).

The updates are felt right from the beginning, as “the Madame” (Cate Blanchett, actually the character Claire as the Madame) makes herself up, while her playful, childlike maid (Huppert as Solange assuming the role of Claire) does crazy exercise-ish dance moves on the bed while the Velvet Underground's “I'll Be Your Mirror” is pumped through the house loud speakers (see, the women are sisters and role-players – they're mirrors, see?). While it is a joy to see Blanchett glamorizing herself while Huppert, legs parted, does some very sexual calisthenics on the bed, the scene is a pointless addition that alerts the audience to the fact that this will be a very “light” production of the play.

But that isn't all we see – director Benedict Andrews and Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Andrew Upton's super-techno updating of the play (“Genet might be a great playwright, but a little mixed media can't hurt!”) means that a giant video screen is above the bedroom set. On the screen we see still-frame details of flowers, the Madame's dresses, shoes, and the like; we also see a different angle on the action (Blanchett's shoes, Huppert lying on the ground, the women looking into mirrors as they make themselves up) and actions that take place offstage.

Herein lies the most abrasive portion of this reviewer's experience seeing the play – I bought a ticket for a nosebleed seat in the back of the mezzanine specifically because it seemed to be well-located in relation to the stage and because the seat in question was not one labeled “obstructed view.” But it did have an obstructed view of the production as a whole – the kind and generous folks at the Lincoln Center Festival and City Center didn't bother to note when one bought a ticket that if you sat in the mezzanine, the video screen would be blocked by the underside of the upper balcony.

So I can report only on what appeared on the very bottom quadrant of the video screen, because my entire section was indeed one with an obstructed view. From what I could see of it, however, the technique was wildly unnecessary and simply intended to “soup up” the proceedings.

What I could see quite clearly was the video cameraman hidden behind the nearly transparent wall. This is an “effect” intended by our two Genet revisionists. What it succeeds in doing – and not in a good way – is distracting us from the actresses trying to breathe life into characters who have been denuded-beyond-denuding so we can watch a technician feverishly rolling a camera back and forth, doing his work all throughout the play. (Genet preferred his “layering” in the casting – wanting teenaged boys to play the maids – rather than in the staging and set design.)

So where one sits in City Center can make the production even more irritating (and the costly kind of irritating to boot). But onto the other changes made to the play by director Andrews – who is hailed in the press materials as “one of Australia's most regarded theatrical talents” (not highly regarded, just regarded), but who definitely seems to have a spiritual connection to his countryman Baz “let's update this storyline – our audience has no attention span!” Luhrmann.

Andrews stages The Maids primarily as a comedy. The tone given to the material, the delivery and pauses the actresses give to their lines, the constant rewrites of the lines (I'd swear I heard the phrase “old school” go by at one point), and the fact that so much of it was staged as farce, not drama, made certain that the audience could yuk it up.

Perhaps Andrews and Upton felt that the play needed a modern “tone” and that would be tongue-in-cheek. The manner in which the play is usually staged was reproduced in the American Film Theater's splendid 1974 film of the play starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York.

That dramatic, heavily ceremonial tone is obviously something Andrews and Upton wished to “improve” upon, thus the farcical tone of his production – which then turns starkly dramatic every so often, when Andrews chose to return to the original text. The shift in tone dilutes the drama and seems to cast a pall over the audience, who, during the performance I saw, seemed disappointed by the dramatic moments and waiting with baited breath to laugh again. (It's the Baz Luhrmann Effect – keep things light and breezy!)

Lastly, there's the matter of casting. The 13 performances of the play are selling out in Manhattan because of the stellar duo in the lead roles. Blanchett is fresh off of winning an Oscar, and Huppert is arguably the best actress on the planet, so the two seem like a “dream team” in a well-known play with sexual/psychological/political overtones. (The last-mentioned aspect of the play is almost buried entirely in Andrews and Upton's vision, by the way.)

There is a definite oddness to the pairing, though, as Huppert is actually French and speaks heavily accented English (but pronounces the few French phrases and names that have been retained beautifully, as could be expected). Blanchett, for her part, starts out the play speaking in a British “posh” accent (when playing the Madame), and then returns to her own native Aussie accent (this being a production from Oz, after all) for the rest of the show.

Thus, playing two sisters who have presumably lived their whole life together in France, you have a real Frenchwoman and a lady from Oz. NYT critic Ben Brantley (who never met an encomium he didn't like) praised this casting, declaring that it “discounts any possibility of our accepting The Maids on easy naturalistic terms.” Good try, Ben (calm down, man!), but your mention of Huppert's accent being “unintelligible” means that the device is a failure. And it is.

To make the production even more odd, Andrews decided to vary the casting of the Madame away from the usual sort of actress who would play the role (an older aristocratic type, like Vivien Merchant in the 1974 AFT version). Instead he has cast Elizabeth Debicki (one of the stars of the Luhrmann “soup this up!” Great Gatsby), a sexy young actress who positively looms over Huppert (I couldn't tell if she's a foot taller, but she really dwarfs her fellow actress, even when barefoot).

So the Madame – who namechecks McQueen and is basically a fashion model who married well, instead of a pompous, condescending aristocrat – is a hot young number (the video feeds having shown us every line on Huppert and Blanchett's faces) who spends most of her time onstage in her lingerie and nothing more. In other productions, the sexual tension has been provided solely by the two actresses playing the maids, but in Andrews and Upton's rerowking, the Madame is also sexually charged, confusing matters entirely and, again, removing the overtly political aspect of Genet's original entirely.

As I started out saying above, though, Huppert can do no wrong. At the end of the play, she is left alone onstage to do a final monologue in which she speaks directly to the audience and reflects on her position in life.

This final scene erases (nearly) the memories of all of Andrews and Upton's innovations and brings the play back down to earth, and to the playacting dimension that is central to the whole affair. No more childlike bouncing around, no more focus on fashion, no more distractions from the acting and the dialogue, just an actress incarnating a character who herself is used to playing a role in her daily life.

Blanchett does wonderful things with her role, and Huppert ultimately triumphs over all the silly innovations dreamed up by Andrews and Upton. It's a shame they're not in a better production of this classic play.