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New York Times
THEATER REVIEW | 'SILENCE'
Punishing a Norman Princess in England Wednesday
June 26, 2002
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Is the apocalypse at hand?
What is the proper response to the threat of
further deadly attacks by foreigners of a different religion?
What is the nature of God in a savage world?
What is the cost to individuals and society of
sexual stereotypes?
How are Roman Catholic clergymen to deal with
temptations of the flesh?
These are among the timely questions raised eloquently
in "Silence," the witty, provocative, splendidly performed prizewinning
comedy-drama by the British playwright Moira Buffini that will conclude
an all-too-short monthlong run at the Ohio Theater in SoHo on Saturday.
Though the issues raised in this Synapse Theater
production are as current as the morning's news, "Silence," inspired
by fact, is set a thousand years ago, in 1002, when Ymma of Normandy,
a headstrong, fiercely angry princess, arrives in England. She has
been exiled by her brother to Canterbury, to be punished by Ethelred,
the English king beset by Viking raids, desperate to fathom God's
will and fearful that after a millennium of Christianity the Last
Judgment might be at hand.
In this England, Ymma, chafing against her lot
as a woman and accompanied by her servant, Agnes, will meet not
only a king branded feeble and vacillating but also the laconic
and lethal warrior Eadric Longshaft, the young priest Roger and
the person the king has chosen as her groom, Silence, the ruler
of Cumbria.
Among other problems the king rarely leaves his
bed; Eadric falls under the spell of the beauteous, intimidating
Ymma; Roger falls for Agnes and Agnes for Roger; and Silence, though
bold and commanding, is a beardless, sexually naïve 14-year-old.
Along the bumpy road from Canterbury to self-knowledge
and resolution in Cumbria, "Silence," commissioned by the Royal
National Theater Studio and a winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn
Prize, plays itself out in episodes of cross-dressing, disguised
identity, burgeoning love and truth-inducing mushrooms, as the king,
roused from his torpor by the realization that he should have wed
Ymma himself, pursues her. Now inflamed by passion and inspirited
by what he calls "the thrill of the divine," he litters his trail
with the innocent dead.
"I took their souls, like God," he says.
As for the priestly Roger, he asks: "Is God going
to destroy us? And if he is, is he wrong?"
But the magnetic center of this play is Ymma,
brought to potent, mesmerizing life by Jessica Claire. Ymma is a
woman to be reckoned with from the moment she appears until her
destiny is resolved at the bittersweet finish of "Silence."
As the king transformed from impotence to murderous
majesty, Matthew Maher is both funny in his weakness and horrifying
in his homicidal mania. Excellent, too, under the direction of Ginevra
Bull, are Jens Martin Krummel as the repressed, dutiful Longshaft;
Abigail Savage as young Silence and Chan Casey as Roger, the priest
who undertakes to educate the heathen Silence in the ways of Christianity.
Jessica Chandlee Smith as the servant and narrator Agnes has the
least rewarding of the play's roles.
"Silence" deserves to be seen.
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