A SYMPATHETIC BIODRAMA
VIVIEN
Directed by Peter Sander; scenic design based on original set by Ron Madonia;
costume design by Gail Russell
With: Janis Stevens
At the Theater at Monmouth in Monmouth, Maine
On July 19, July 20, and August 7, 2007
Reviewed by Laurie Graves
To
start with, I have two confessions to make. First, if I were to make a list
of the one hundred worst movies I have ever seen, Gone with the Wind
would be on that list, and it wouldn’t be at the bottom. The romantic
twaddle and the not-so-adorable heroine are bad enough, but the underlying
message is even worse. That is, things were just jolly and good in the South
until those evil Northerners came and ruined everything. Sure thing. As the
New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik put it, the story was conceived during
a time when “antebellum labor camps were appealing as long as the guards’
daughters wore corsets.” It is definitely a relic of the “bad old days.”
And second, I am put off by the mannered acting style that predates
Marlon Brando and method acting. In movies, especially, it seems forced and
cloying.
So why
did I go see Vivien, a one-woman play about the life of Vivien Leigh,
who not only starred in Gone with the Wind but also had that mannered
acting style that I dislike so much? Well, I hoped it would broaden my
horizons, so to speak, and help me gain sympathy for Leigh as well as an
understanding of her life and work. In that regard, the Theater at
Monmouth’s Vivien was successful on one count. After watching Janis
Stevens’s moving portrayal of Leigh’s battle with tuberculosis and manic
depression (bipolar disorder), I did indeed feel sympathy for a woman who
struggled to cope with her mental illness at a time when not much was known
about it. Today, we understand that manic depression is not caused by
outside events, say, by bad reviews, acting advice or marriages, but rather
it’s a physical and chemical disorder of the brain. It may be influenced by
outside events, but research suggests they are the trigger, not the cause.
However, in Leigh’s time sedatives and electroshock therapy were the
treatments of choice, and they weren’t that effective.
Vivien takes place in July 1967, in London, on a stage that is billed as
“a dream” in the program. Leigh thinks she has come to rehearse her role in
Edward Albee’s play A Delicate Balance, but we understand right away
that she is at the end of her career and her life. The monologue then
ricochets through the past and present events of Leigh’s tumultuous life,
and the lovely Janis Stevens flutters through her role like a lost Blanche
DuBois, whom Leigh played in the 1951 movie version of A Streetcar Named
Desire. We get a glimpse, albeit a small one, of the early, heady days
when Leigh met Laurence Olivier, fell in love with him, and acted with him
on stage. Then it’s on to her triumph in Gone with the Wind, where
she played Scarlet O’Hara, with whom she apparently identified, and won not
only public acclaim but also an Academy Award for best actress. After that,
the good times are pretty much over as Leigh careens out of control, going
from breakdown to breakdown, professing to both love and hate “Larry.” He
has his flings, and she has hers. We hear snippets of Shakespeare, delivered
in a style that is somehow both mannered and breathless but never indicates
that there is any depth or talent. And so it goes, for over an hour,
until the lights go out, and it is the end for Vivien.
Unfortunately, Vivien never rises above the conventions of biodrama
and falls into the trap that so many biopics do. By focusing so heavily on
the traumatic events and breakdowns of Leigh’s life, we don’t get a sense of
where she came from or who she was, other than a poor, unfortunate soul who
struggled with mental illness. It is a one-note profile. We don’t get a
sense of Leigh’s sparkle, which she must have had to appeal to so many
people, or any of the complexities that come together to form a person. In
doing research, I found out Leigh was born in India (this is only briefly
touched upon), and that she was educated in a convent in England, where she
became friends with Maureen O’Sullivan, who inspired Leigh to become an
actress. Leigh’s parents were supportive of her acting career. Her mother
claimed to be Irish but was also probably of mixed Armenian-Parsee Indian
descent. This makes Leigh’s identification with Scarlet O’Hara very
interesting, to say the least. Another interesting point is that early in
her career, Leigh was criticized as having a “weak stage voice,” but her
beauty attracted attention, which helped her get started in movies.
So, in
the end, Vivien was a partial success for me. Janis Stevens did a
fine job of portraying a troubled soul and winning my sympathies.
Unfortunately, I didn’t come away with an understanding of what made Leigh
an important or compelling star or gain much sense of her as a person. Well,
one out of two is better than nothing.
