Vivien Leigh as caricature sketch
The celebrated actress Vivien Leigh was a troubled woman who suffered from what was called manic-depression in her lifetime and is called bipolar disorder in ours. Vivien is a troubled account of her life, as told by her.
The celebrated actress Vivien Leigh was a troubled woman who suffered from what was called manic-depression in her lifetime and is called bipolar disorder in ours.
Vivien
is a troubled account of her life, as told by her.
The 85-minute one-woman show, which opened Thursday at Walnut Street Theatre's Independence Studio on 3, is a histrionic vent about every subject on her lips, but mostly about her tortured relationship with Laurence Olivier. The two were married for 20 years, through fits and spurts of love and disdain, and through Leigh's constant mental anguish.
Rick Foster's script, which he developed with (and for) actress Janis Stevens, gives Leigh an all-too-theatrical mien. Stevens throws herself into the role, and her performance is altogether admirable. But the script is low on storytelling and larded with pretense and raw emotion.
What you get is a fantasized star who breaks into Shakespeare as if the Bard were writing about Olivier, or her, or their situations, in which she is always a victim. Or you get Leigh questioning, as though the future of the planet is at stake, what the world will know of her 100 years from now, and isn't it shocking how dreadfully little that will be, compared with Olivier?
In fact, what the world - more specifically, the audience - knows of Leigh is a key point. Foster's script presumes we know a lot.
She carries on make-believe, one-way discussions with Olivier, Noel Coward, Ken Tynan, Katharine Hepburn, Peter Finch, and London producer Binky Beaumont. The device is a stretch, and it's not immediately apparent who some of these visitors are or why they're there. (Finch, in fact, was her paramour.) When you can't tell the players without a program, that's theater; when you can't parse the play without a bio, that's a seminar.
She complains she's down, out and unemployed, yet the script puts her on the rehearsal stage of Edward Albee's
A Delicate Balance
, where she's about to play opposite Michael Redgrave. She complains and - complains.
Vivien
has one bright spot, whenever the character talks about the ego battle over Oscars that Olivier ignites, and that's because there are actual stories to tell. It also has a real insight: Leigh perceiving her roles as Antigone and as Blanche DuBois in
A Streetcar Names Desire
to represent the two dimensions of her illness.
I'm not sure you ever really get Vivien Leigh in
Vivien
, as opposed to just her demons. Can this one-dimensional piece of hysteria - standing on an empty stage in London in 1967, days before she dies of tuberculosis at age 53 - be the same woman who only three years before won a Tony for best musical actress (yes, musical) in Broadway's
Tovarich
? Who won the best-actress Oscar twice, in 1940 for Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone With the Wind
and in 1951 for Blanche in
Streetcar
? Who'd made the film
Ship of Fools
just before her death?
Vivien Leigh was ill, but if we really believe that Foster's hyper-stylized stage portrait represents anything but theatrical pomposity, well, the ship of fools is still afloat.
Vivien
Written by Rick Foster, directed by Peter Sander, set by Meghan Jones, costumes by Gail Russell, lighting by Shon Causer. Presented by Walnut Street Theatre.
The cast:
Janis Stevens (Vivien Leigh).
Playing at
the Walnut Street Theatre's Independence Studio on 3, 825 Walnut St., through Feb. 3. Tickets: $28. Information: 215-574-3550 or
» READ MORE: www.walnutstreettheatre.org
.