IReview: 'In the 'Shadow' of acting giants

Both were mired in slumps in 1960. Orson Welles was treading water, hoping for another opportunity to prove his mettle. Sir Laurence Olivier, an aging prince whose 20-year marriage to Vivien Leigh was crumbling, felt the pincers of transition.

Playwright Austin Pendleton distilled these midlife crises into a neat backstage drama brimming with arch wit, history and a sympathetic look at a genius (Welles) caught in his own past. "Orson's Shadow," which opened Friday at Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul, tweaks a real-life event that involved Welles and Olivier -- friends of the backstabbing variety -- and gives us a universal look at how fragile our futures are.

Welles directed Olivier in a Royal Court production of Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" in 1960. Pendleton suggests that critic Kenneth Tynan lubricated the deal, a reasonable extrapolation of his later tenure with Olivier at the National Theatre. The fated staging also featured Joan Plowright, Olivier's new paramour.

Welles and Olivier clashed over interpreting Ionesco's modernism, providing Pendleton with satisfying grist to exploit. Plowright navigated between the two with wise neutrality while Tynan's emphysema worsened -- a seeming metaphor of the doomed project.

Pendleton falters only when meditating on Olivier and Leigh. A long, long second scene between the two nearly torpedoes the fun that has been set up previously. Luckily, the piece rebounds in the second act.

Gremlin's production, ably directed by Matt Sciple, benefits from a deliciously genuine performance by Garry Geiken as Welles. Full of weary cynicism and self-targeted bitterness, Geiken's Welles skates the fine line between parody and reality. He is sympathetic yet pompous enough to give us a whiff of why Welles was his own worst enemy. John Middleton gives a comprehensive and nuanced portrayal of Tynan, and Katie Guentzel finds the right mix of grace and steel in Plowright. Young Matt Rein is a wonderful innocent as a stagehand who serves as a kind of everyman chorus. Carolyn Pool provides a convincing Norma Desmond moment as Leigh.

Only Alan Sorenson's Olivier seems a square peg. Sporting a hairpiece that appears plucked from the early 1990s, Sorenson is too aware of his portrayal. Caricature works best when it's done unconsciously, and here it is all gesture and intent. Compared with Geiken's natural ease, Sorenson's portrayal takes on a farcical mien.

If "Orson's Shadow" does nothing else, it will spike your curiosity about its historic characters. That alone is reason to see it.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299