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 t h e a t r e

Alan Bates & Frank Langella
at the opening night curtain call.

April 3, 2002 -- WHERE has Ivan Turgenev's "Fortune's Fool" been all our lives? Turgenev, celebrated for his short stories, novels and delineation of what he called the "superfluous man" -- the idle aristocrat in Czarist Russia -- wrote quite a few plays, but only "A Month in the Country" seems to have survived outside of Russia.
That is, until Mike Poulton's adaptation of "Nakhlebnik," or "Fortune's Fool," which arrived at the Music Box Theatre last night in a staging by Arthur Penn as crisp as a Russian spring and boasting two virtuoso performances from Alan Bates and Frank Langella.
Poulton's adaptation was first given at Britain's Chichester Festival in 1996 -- and, so far as I could discover, was the only English-language stage production of the play since 1909.
It's a romantic comedy that starts with an arrival, proceeds with a revelation and ends with a bittersweet departure.
Here the arrival is that of Olga Petrovna (Enid Graham), who, after many years, has come back to her family estate, accompanied by her new bridegroom, Pavel Nikolaitch Tropatchov (Benedick Bates), and anxiously awaited by Vassily Semyonitch Kuzovkin (Alan Bates).

Kuzovkin is a perfect example of Turgenev's "superfluous man." An elderly and totally penniless nobleman who has, it seems, been tricked out of his estates, he has been living in penurious charity at the country house since the death of Olga's parents.
Insulted by the serf servants, this down-at-the-soul man, once maintained by Olga's father as a kind of court jester, now has only a poor neighbor, Ivanov (George Morfogen), as his friend and chess partner.
At first, it seems as though Kuzovkin will be accepted by the happy couple.
Enter Flegont Alexandrovitch Tropatchov (Langella), a wealthy land-owner and foppish snob. Tropatchov is an overbearing, semicultivated lout with a clever and infinite gift for making trouble.
He virtually invites himself to dinner. Then he plies Kuzovkin with unwelcome drink and goads him into making a complete fool of himself, and is finally rewarded with Kuzovkin desperately offering a revelation that -- true or not -- will almost certainly lead him to leave his home and shelter.
It is a play that is both extraordinarily amusing, yet also -- and this is Turgenev's, and also Alan Bates's, genius -- eventually extraordinarily moving.

Under Penn's carefully modulated direction and helped by the designers, John Arnone (sets), Jane Greenwood (costumes), Brian Nason (lighting) and Brian Ronan (sound), Turgenev's rural mid-19th-century Russia comes to 21st-century Broadway life.
Langella's Tropatchov is a wonderful steamroller of a performance, with all the bells and whistles clanging and wheezing at storm force. He is terrific.
And all the subsidiary performances - particularly Graham's gracious Olga, Benedick Bates' crass yet decent Pavel and Morfogen's dowdy and appalled neighbor - are splendid.
Yet the play hinges on Kuzovkin, and Alan Bates -- from humble start to humiliating finish -- doesn't put a foolish step, futile gesture or insinuating tone wrong.
This is a performance to cherish -- Alan Bates, always the exemplary technician, revealing a sad heart and shabby passion you'll remember all your life.

Copyright New York Post, 2002

IT MAY BE your opinion that the last thing Manhattan needs is another drunken windbag, the kind who ruins dinner parties by driveling and ranting through every course, spitting food and sloshing wine. But please let Alan Bates help you to reconsider this social prejudice.
Mr. Bates, you see, is playing just that sort of man, a fellow whom liquor turns into a logorrheic, napkin-slinging nightmare, in "Fortune's Fool," an Ivan Turgenev play some 150 years old that is only now receiving its Broadway premiere. And oh what a lovely bore Mr. Bates turns out to be. This charisma-packed British actor - who became a renegade matinee idol in the 1960's with films like "Georgy Girl" and "King of Hearts" - returned to the New York stage last season (after a three-decade absence) in Yasmina Reza's "Unexpected Man." But his stately, teasing performance merely hinted at the fireworks he is still capable of releasing.
For at least 15 minutes of "Fortune's Fool," which opened last night at the Music Box Theater, Mr. Bates brings out the Roman candles, and it is a spectacle no lover of acting should miss. Playing a shabby, self-effacing Russian aristocrat, Mr. Bates turns one sad fellow's humiliating moment of drunken grandstanding into a triumph of timing, technique and continuously startling insights. READ FULL REVIEW

- Ben Brantley, New York Times, 3.iv.02

Mid-century Russia (nineteenth that is) comes to droll and wistful life in Ivan Turgenev's Fortune's Fool. Effectively adapted by Mike Poulton and imaginatively staged by Arthur Penn, this is old-style theater performed in exuberant fashion (now, alas, out of fashion) by a cast headed by Alan Bates and Frank Langella. ... Bates gives a masterly performance, brimming with controlled gusto, larger than life-size yet microscopically detailed. ,,, Unlike so much sham now usurping our stages, Fortune's Fool is a genuine, professionally crafted, and cannily produced play.
(Photo by Carol Rosegg)

- John Simon, New York Magazine, 15.iv.02

There has been a pleasing shower of shows opening on Broadway. But a bolt of lightning struck the other night in the lovely Music Box Theatre. Audiences are leaving Ivan Turgenev's "Fortune's Fool" looking dazed with delight.
Several weeks ago I sat with one of the show's intriguing producers, Julian Schlossberg. We pondered whether there'd be an audience for this drama. The prize-winning Arthur Penn came out of a semi-retirement to direct and two incredible actors, Alan Bates and the dynamic Frank Langella, star. So we needn't have worried.
The actors are miracles of thespian art, separately and ensemble. One never wants Mr. Bates to leave the stage. His touching, weepy, besotted, lovable ne'er-do-well is majestic in scope, moving us from tears to laughter. Mr. Langella (oh, who could forget his Dracula onstage?) creates an outrageous sense of scurrilous camp. His character is delightful and fearsome. Everything is perfection -- directing, costumes, lighting, and I loved the entire cast, which includes Alan's son, Benedick Bates. The 11 producers have brought a gem to Gotham. Don't you dare miss "Fortune's Fool."

- Liz Smith, New York Post, 5.iv.02

The mystery of the exact nature of his connection to Olga Petrovna deepens when she greets Kuzovkin as Vassily Petrovitch, even though his name is Vassily Semyonitch. He tells Ivanov that the mixup means nothing, but we can't help noticing that Petrovitch and Petrovna are intriguingly similar. ... Tropatchov is both a clever observer of the social mores of the landed gentry and an "infamous, fatuous fop," as Kuzovkin later calls him ... (He could be the love child of Gore Vidal and Dame Edna.)
In the end, order is restored, but at great cost, and Langella and Bates, each in his own way, are marvellous at showing us the cruelty and the pathos involved in keeping up appearances.

- Nancy Franklin, The New Yorker, 15.iv.02

Alan Bates makes the most of these scenes, beautifully balancing bluster with pathos, self-assurance with vulnerability. He wrings every laugh possible from his character's pride and foolishness while also conveying his essential dignity and deep feeling. While Alan Rickman is yet to arrive in "Private Lives," this performance will be the one to beat at Tony time.

- Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, 8.iv.02

Alan Bates, as a destitute nobleman, and Frank Langella, as an interfering neighbor, are brilliantly matched, each playing against and off the other in a pair of the best realized performances this season. Watching them possess the stage as to the manor born, one has a sense of deja vu, of catching glimpses of grand performances from some long vanished golden era when legendary actors trod the boards. ...
Fortune's Fool is that rare thing, a funny, satisfying and emotionally rewarding evening at the theatre. And under Penn's direction, Bates and Langella are not to be missed! Fortune's Fool is the first genuine "must see" this season. READ FULL REVIEW

- Thomas Burke, talkinbroadway.com, 2.iv.02

...Benedick Bates (Alan's son) is strong as the unfeeling husband...

...The portrait of a pathetic, useless fellow undone partly by his own fatalism, partly by the forces of modernism, is one that resonates clearly for us... Bates has a wonderfully poignant quality as Kuzovkin, especially in the long monologue in which, with endearing befuddlement, he makes his startling confession.

- Howard Kissel, New York Daily News, 3.iv.02

Penn's direction is active and cohesive, drawing out the strengths of his talented cast. Enid Graham is poised and sympathetic as Olga, and Bates's son Benedick is correctly callow as her unsettled husband. Also strong are George Morfogen as Vassily's worried friend, and Lola Pashalinki and Edwin C. Owens as senior servants. But the evening belongs to Bates, especially in the long and dazzling scene that closes the first act. Plied by wine and champagne, and taunted mercilessly by Flegont, Vassily gets drunker and drunker, until finally his old wounds come bleeding out in anger. Bates inhabits Vassily's shame with exhilarating skill and humanity. You leave the theater feeling tipsy with admiration.

- Adam Feldman, broadway.com, 3.iv.02

AN ENJOYABLE CLASH of acting titans, "Fortune's Fool" boasts a pair of priceless star turns: A master of scruffy realism, Alan Bates is touching as a down-at-heels provincial gentleman. A virtuoso of a thousand rococo flourishes, Frank Langella is hilarious as a preening grandee.
These eminent artists give distinction to "Fortune's Fool," a new semi-British rework of a not-so-classic Russian drama that opened Tuesday at Broadway's Music Box Theatre. ... satisfying in performance, "Fortune's Fool" is Chekhov Lite made memorable by its dazzling leading players.

- Michael Sommers, Newhouse News Service, 3.iv.02

Bates is remarkable in carefully negotiating the man's foolishness and faith. That balance holds him in good stead during the play's most theatrical scene: when Kuzovkin drunkenly reveals a family secret.
In the scene, Bates caroms around the stage, egged on and plied with champagne by a foppish neighbor and estate owner, Tropatchov. This gentleman is portrayed with malevolent glee by Langella, giving the plummiest performance on Broadway. The character smirks, poses, switches into affected French or Italian, nd generally delights in causing discomfort to others. Langella, all raised eyebrows and melodious tones, makes it funny and, more important, believable.
Tropatchov humiliates the inebriated jester, turning what begins as a scene of high hilarity into one of heartbreaking mortification. It couldn't make for a better first-act curtain.
Yet there is more to the play that the savagery of Kuzovkin's humiliation. Bates gets to show another side of this extraordinary character in Act 2, when he confronts the young woman who has inherited her parents' estate. READ FULL REVIEW

- Michael Kuchwara, AP Arts Review, 3.iv.02

His performances on stage here -- not to mention his brief but superb appearance in Gosford Park -- signify that Bates is still an actor at the top of his form. ... Watching Bates register Kuzovkin's simultaneously agonised and elated reaction to Olga's arrival -- will she even remember him? Will she let him stay? -- is our first indication of the delicacy the actor brings to even the most broadly comic moments of the play.
Chief among these is the drunk scene that closes Act I ... Bates's performance of this bravura set-piece is both acutely amusing and acutely painful. The comedy comes from the actor's crisp sense of the humour in ts Dickensian detail and the passionate precision with which it is delivered even through an alcoholic haze. The pain arrives when Kuzovkin is rudely awakened from his sweet delusions by the humiliating recognition that his saga is seen by others as an elaborate joke -- the look of desolation on Bates's face tears at the heart. READ FULL REVIEW

- Charles Isherwood, The Times (London), 8.iv.02

Mike Poulton's savvy adaptation of Turgenev's text, Arthur Penn's vigorous direction and two excellent performances make these virtues accessible and affecting. Alan Bates' Kuzovkin is at once acutely droll and achingly tender; his underlying dignity is never entirely obscured. Likewise, Frank Langella refuses to dismiss Tropatchov as a scenery-chewing troublemaker. There are glimmers of wisdom and even compassion in his scheming antagonist, who manages a delightful comic rapport with his victim.

- Elysa Garner, USA Today, 3.iv.02

..there can be no doubt that this is Bates' evening. He would seem to be assured of a best actor Tony nomination.

...Pavel, acted with a lordly air by Bates' tall, dashing son, Benedick Bates, also shows forbearance with the old family retainer. For a time, it seems, Vassily's fears of being cast out are groundless. But with the arrival of Langella's affected, effete Flegont Alexandrovitch Tropatchov, things begin to tilt against the fool of fortune, as he defeats himself, then hurls a bombshell into the orderly household in a burst of frustration.

- Malcolm Johnson, Hartford Courant, 22.ii.02, during preview week

Kuzovkin is waiting for the newlyweds with his equally poor but protective friend -- played with a nice touching empathy by George Morfogen. Enid Graham has a pleasant matter-of-factness as the bride, who was just a child when she left. Benedick Bates, son of Alan, allows us room to wonder a bit about the mixed motives of her groom.
Then there is Langella's fop -- or "infamous, fatuous fop," as Kuzovkin says during the long drunken humiliation scene that leads to a not-so-surprising surprise. Langella, with his infamous appetite for tasty slabs of scenery, has a grand time as the insufferable peacock, a man who can say "flippety floppety" as if spouting a noble Russian's French while choreographing his wrists to dance to his own music. In his own Restoration comedy.
That scenery he chews, by the way, has been handsomely designed by John Arnone -- including a fancy carved-wooden foyer and a fluffy blue sitting room.

- Linda Winer, Newsday, 3.iv.02