It was written by a playwright of extraordinary gifts. Its director has a track record of creating magical moments on stage. It has an impeccable cast. It has a fascinating subject. Yet, the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts. And what should have been a compelling evening of theatre rarely engages the attention of its audience.
Terrence McNally’s Fire and Air, currently playing at the Classic Stage Company, should have entranced its audience with an urgent tale of the power and necessity of art. Centering on the Ballets Russe and its impresario Sergei Diaghilev (David Hodge) as the company and leader strove to create new, dangerous, and innovative performances in the Modernist vein in the crucible of war-torn and revolution-torn Europe of the early twentieth century. It is a drama rife with possibilities. But McNally – who has effectively dramatized the power of opera in Master Class and The Lisbon Traviata – fails to make the third time to charm with the ballet. The production moves quickly through the years with little context or sense of how the cataclysmic events of the time are impacting the art.
The intended portrait of Diaghilev as visionary and genius fails to connect. We are told that he is brilliant, but we are never shown that he is. He comes across as a child, alternating between fits of privilege or fear, rather than as someone who grasps the elemental potential of dance. His sexual domination in the first act of Nijinsky (James Cusatsi-Moyer) and in the second act of Massine (Jay Armstrong Johnson) communicates not so much as the idiosyncratic but ultimately benign behavior of a mentor and genius, but, in this age of #metoo, but as abusive practices that remind one far too much of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. We recoil, especially as Nijinsky seems (it is really not clear) to have spiraled into madness.
The cast is game, but they are given little to do. Veteran thespians John Glover, Marsha Mason, and Marin Mazzie round out the supporting cast, but they have little impact upon the narrative momentum of the show. They observe, comment, and support Diaghilev (though, again, it is unclear as to why). The night I attended, Mazzie’s role (Misia) was performed by an understudy. Usually, that is a source of disappointment, but I do not think Mazzie would have impacted the play any more than Glover or Mason did. Hodge, the night I attended, struggled with his diction, and that was not conducive providing clarity for what was already a muddle.
The two younger performers fared better. Cusatsi-Moyer has a magnetic presence, but he seemed to be constrained by writing that demanded he only serve as enigmatic temptation. There seemed to be a fuller three-dimensional life going on behind his eyes, and it would have benefitted the production if he had been given free reign to explore that. Johnson constantly offered much-needed vitality with fresh and original choices that gave him more nuance than perhaps was intended for the boy toy du jour role.
At the end of the day, all of the talent on stage and in the production could not animate what should have been an extraordinary theatrical event.