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Shows Worth Seeing:
Man and Boy
By Terence Rattigan
American Airlines Theatre
227 W. 42nd St.
Box office: (212) 719-1300
This workmanlike 1963 morality tale about a sociopathic mogul
of international finance is barely more than a competent “social
drama.” Yet it does have a compelling central character,
and given the economic headlines of recent years, the logic of
reviving it is undeniable. The protagonist is a depression-era
Romanian named Gregor Antonescu, whose financial empire is a flimsy
lattice of Ponzi schemes that will destroy thousands of investors
and cause widespread financial panic when they collapse. The jig
is basically up as the action begins, with Antonescu on the run.
Faster than you can say “Bernie Madoff,” though, he
hatches a plan to save himself by showing up unannounced at the
Greenwich Village apartment of his estranged son, planning to
hold a crucial business meeting there. No need to recount details
of the meeting, which involves crude homosexual blackmail, or
the reunion with the son, which devolves into crude Freudian clichés.
Rattigan isn’t interested enough in the plot or most of
the play’s characters to make them sparkle or spring to
life.
Antonescu is the one exception. The text examines his villainous
particularities from so many different angles that he becomes
a delectable treat for the right actor—and Frank Langella
is unquestionably that actor. He knows exactly how to flesh out
what is merely hinted at in the text, building on a surface of
suave boardroom charm with fleeting hints of repellent oiliness,
raging viciousness, tender sincerity, grim determination, calculating
coolness, and much, much more. Langella’s performance is
endlessly interesting, providing in the end that all-important
tincture of surprise that the play lacks. The feat of self-creation
behind this masterly performance is the marvel of the evening.
