CURTAIN UP REVIEW

The beauty of Yasmina Reza's play The Unexpected Man is the skill with which she builds and reveals her characters before they are allowed to speak to each other. That takes guts.

A man and a woman in their twilight years, strangers on a train, he a famous author, she an aficionada who has his latest book entitled The Unexpected Man in her bag, ruminate in separate monologues for an hour of Reza's 90-minute play. The author, played by Christopher Lloyd who bears an uncanny resemblance to playwright Arthur Miller, begins bitter. He rails against the critics, the prospective son-in-law he's acquiring, the inadequacy of sexual relations in which the less he knows the woman the better. The woman, played by Holland Taylor, displays her elegant profile and expresses her gratitude for wearing her new suit and finding a good hairdresser before she boarded this train. She has recently ended a long-time relationship with a man who leaves her for another woman, seems to have a distant relationship with her two children, but has found companionship and guidance from the books of the remote man who now sits across from her on the train from Paris to Frankfurt.

"I'm the captain of a lost ship," sighs the man. The woman muses about the human capacity to desire so much and, in the end, to feel so little. Although the writer and his critics consider his work vitriolic, the woman sees that very anger as full of life and a savage joy. She may admire that attribute because being civil, she considers, is perhaps where she's gone wrong. Although the writer is accused of having no world view, she disagrees, finding proof in his very negativity. Even the writer's allergy to nuance, she avers, is a view of the world.

Far too shy to fetch out the book she has in her bag, she imagines different approaches. One, she envisions, would provoke him to a great burst of laughter. The writer, also, is obsessed with laughter. He compares the unaffected laugh to the deathly In Laugh of theatre-goers who like to show off their erudition and with-it-ness.

The writer has not been wholly insensitive to the woman. He fantasizes about her destination. Does she have a husband or a lover? A lover, he decides. Finally he works up the nerve to ask her if he might open the window. She stammers "yes"

. In a wonderful interior monologue reminiscent in a less physical way of James Joyce's Molly Bloom, she says she would say yes to whatever his unspoken question was, just as she said yes when he rested his eyes on her and spoke of fresh air. The metaphor is redolent of what he has brought to her life.

At last, what we have been waiting for happens. Perhaps emboldened by his breaking the ice, perhaps desperate at the approach of Frankfurt, she fetches his book from her bag and begins to read. "A subject for a short story", whispers the writer, in a nod to Chekhov's The Sea Gull.

Few writers offer as much as Reza in the way of philosophy and characterization before dialogue is allowed to begin. Some American viewers have found the play undramatic and slow. Those who remember the French fondness for monologues as demonstrated by such writers as Racine and have the patience for Reza's gift of discovery will find their 90-minutes packed with suspense, delights and rewards.

Lloyd makes a gruff rambunctious writer, not going gentle into a good night, and Taylor matches him with her golden melancholy and late-discovered courage. Maria Mileaf's vivid direction is complemented by Mark Thompson's train set and elegant costumes and sound by Mic Pool and David Bullard.

DAILY VARIETY

By STEVEN OXMAN

Christopher Lloyd and Holland Taylor perform Yasmina Reza's 'The Unexpected Man' at the Geffen Playhouse.

The follow-up to her Tony-winning hit "Art," Yasmina Reza's "The Unexpected Man" received an underwhelming response in New York, which makes it a bit unexpected that the Geffen production is so undeniably enjoyable. Christopher Lloyd and Holland Taylor dig into this difficult two-character piece with exacting clarity, finding its intelligence, its humor and, ultimately, its pleasing warmth. It's genuinely gratifying to see two fine actors, best known for their television work, challenged to their potential and meeting that challenge so superbly. So often one yearns to see the initial English-language cast in a show like this, especially when that was Alan Bates and Eileen Atkins, but it really is hard to imagine that cast could be better than what we have here. The play is set on a train from Paris to Frankfurt, where a man and a woman find themselves seated across from each other. It proceeds as a series of monologues representing their internal thoughts. He's a famous writer, known for being antisocial and even bitter; she's an enormous admirer of his work and has his latest novel, "The Unexpected Man," in her handbag. She desperately wants to talk to him, but is paralyzed by a combination of awed fear and a sense that her fantasies of who he is might prove far superior to the reality. He, meanwhile, retreats into his own world, contemplating his family problems and a friend's less-than-enthusiastic response to his latest publication.

European to its core, "The Unexpected Man" certainly doesn't shy away from being purposefully self-important, even pretentious, in its characterizations and tone. "Art" didn't either, although that piece at least had characters talking to each other, which made it much more accessible to a broader audience. Here, in just under an hour and a half, without an intermission, we are led to wonder whether these two characters will have any dialogue at all.

It could be dry stuff, but Taylor and Lloyd find all the nuances. With simplicity and passion, they turn many of the more academic contemplations on the nature of art, artist and audience into an exploration of very human desires, without ever compromising the intellectualism of their characters or resorting to bathos.

Lloyd, of course, is known for his broad comedy -- he's the best there is at playing the brilliant buffoon. Here he's no buffoon, but an uptight artiste described as the definition of "midcentury elegance." He's believably that, but he still puts his strong facial features and his unmatched talent with a double take to excellent use.

Taylor probably has the harder role, less stereotypical, a bit less showy and perhaps even more mysterious in her neediness. But without ever seeming to try, she makes her character more and more sympathetic. We find ourselves starting to root for these people who at first seem so very distant and frigid.

Director Maria Mileaf -- who also staged the touring version of "Art" -- deserves a lot of credit here, too, making sure that what suspense there is builds to a genuine climax.

Mileaf also finds enough variation in the staging to keep this from getting too stagnant, and here she's assisted by some stimulating design choices. Hugh Vanstone's lighting and Gary Yerson's music help create the needed transitions and underline the narrative beats. Mark Thompson's set is elegantly nonliteral. The train itself is in the background, a smooth, sleek and reflective surface, while the compartment is created with nothing but a few chairs, positioned asymmetrically around the stage. The chairs sit on a glass platform, a foot or so above the stage proper, which is covered in white stones.

The reflective quality of this partly dreamy, partly realistic set mirrors some of the thematic undercurrents of Reza's work. We can see ourselves in it. And this is also the kind of play that might resonate in Los Angeles more than elsewhere, since the city is populated by so many of the famous and the fawning.

Set and costumes, Mark Thompson; lighting, Hugh Vanstone; sound, Mic Pool, David Bullard; music, Gary Yershon. Opened, reviewed Sept. 19, 2001. Closes Oct. 21. Running time: 1 HOUR, 25 MIN.

LA TIMES

"Chris is a laconic fellow," says Holland Taylor. She's describing the lantern-jawed guy in jeans and gym shoes sitting next to her in a conference room at the Geffen Playhouse. It's Christopher Lloyd. He listens intently as Taylor talks about their new two-person play, "The Unexpected Man," which opens Wednesday. "This play has a whole new set of rules," Taylor says. "I'm used to the juice coming from working with my partner. I'm used to that being the fuel; with that, you combust. And in this play, each of us has to make our own little combustion engine."
    Lloyd plays a famous author, lost in thought, who shares a compartment with Taylor's equally introspective character during a six-hour train trip from Paris to Frankfurt. It's about 70 minutes into "The Unexpected Man" before the characters speak to each other and, during a recent interview, a good 20 minutes before Lloyd himself says a word.
    "The Unexpected Man," written by French playwright Yasmina Reza and translated by Christopher Hampton, offers Lloyd and Taylor loads of lines in the form of alternating monologues. For the play to work, these actors must ignore each other. "When he's speaking, it's his inner thoughts, so that's nothing I would be aware of," Taylor explains. "You can't incorporate listening into it. That would be very destructive to do. You're having a dialogue with yourself, which takes tremendous energy. Once in a while at rehearsal, I've sat to the side and watched Christopher do something [for the first time] because I hadn't been paying attention to it, because I've been trying, mostly been thinking about what I was going to say next."
    Lloyd nods.
    "That's the whole thing about this play, it makes its own rules," Taylor continues. "You usually rely on dialogue, where you're firing off of each other, but here, you have to be firing off of yourself. It's rather exhausting. Usually, the duality, the exchange with another actor creates energy and heat. Here, I have to be lighting my own fire. Sometimes my coals are, eeiiayy, this is not catching," she laughs.
     Taylor, dressed in cream pants and blouse, flops her leg over the arm of a chair, noshes on a bagel, and says, "I remember in rehearsal, the first time we got to our dialogue sections, I was like a spiritual invalid--I fell on Chris like somebody had saved me from an island, fell on his bosom like a starving person who'd been abandoned at sea. Because it's hard to be out there [onstage] on your own."
     Taylor studied acting with Stella Adler in New York, where she worked as a stage performer for 15 years. She appeared with playwright A.R. Gurney in the very first performance of his two-person drama "Love Letters."
     "There's a difference," Taylor says. "In 'Letters,' again, you're sitting next to the person. But it's like a billiard shot: You hit the ball to the audience and it bounces back to the recipient of the letter, so it's still much more connected than this thing."
     After moving to Los Angeles, Taylor, 57, found work in dozens of made-for-television movies and series. In 1998, she was cast as the randy, cranky Judge Kittleson on "The Practice," for which she earned an Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in 1999 and 2000. "I'm quite certain that I owe this part in a way to David Kelley for giving me that extraordinary role on 'The Practice,' " Taylor says, "because I think that show very much changed people's perceptions of the kind of character I would play well or enjoy playing and find natural to play. I got to ride on the coattails of the success of that character, and I'm sure that's why I'm in the position of playing in a two-hander at the Geffen with Christopher Lloyd. Praise de Lord."
     A television role also gave Lloyd's career a big boost. He, of course, became famous as the acid casualty Reverend Jim on "Taxi," earning consecutive outstanding supporting actor Emmy awards in 1982 and 1983. Lloyd's gallery of eccentrics actually began a few years earlier when he played a lunatic in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) and continued with his mad scientist Doc Brown in the "Back to the Future" trilogy starting in 1985.
     "The Unexpected Man" is no comedy. The play recalls instead the serious dramatic material Lloyd performed in the early '70s. He appeared with Meryl Streep at Yale Repertory Theatre; performed off-Broadway in David Rabe's "In the Boom Boom Room"; co-starred with Christopher Walken in "Macbeth" at the New York Shakespeare Festival; and earned 1973 Obie and Drama Desk Awards when he starred at Brooklyn's Chelsea Theater Center in "Kaspar," an avant-garde play by Peter Handke about an animal-like 16-year-old gradually trying to become human.
     When "Unexpected Man" director Maria Mileaf and Phyllis Schuringa, assistant to the artistic director, put together their wish list of candidates for the roles, Mileaf had never seen Lloyd or Taylor onstage, but remembered hearing about Lloyd's virtuosity in "Kaspar." "It was all done over the phone," she says. "When I was casting, I was looking for people who would bring their own ... quirkiness and passion to these parts, because for a large part of the play, it's just two bodies in space, it's about what's going on in their heads. And so I wanted people where I cared about being in their heads. And their choices at rehearsals have been bold and honest and not the norm."
     Mileaf directed the touring production of Reza's "Art," which earned the Tony for best play in 1998. Both "Art" and "Unexpected Man" deal with similar issues, she says: "the theme of these characters questioning what their mark on the world will be, and also exploring the nature of friendship and, really, the necessary bonds among people, friends that you have, that you leave, or take for granted. I think that's very similar in both plays."
     "The Unexpected Man" debuted in 1995 in France. Translated by Christopher Hampton, the piece was produced by London's Royal Shakespeare Company in 1998. Last fall, the play, starring Eileen Atkins and Alan Bates, opened off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre to mixed reviews.
     The specific setting for "Unexpected Man" may be largely foreign to many theatergoers here--who takes trains in Los Angeles?--but Mileaf says being confined to a train compartment for six hours is not that different from being stuck in freeway traffic.
     What will resonate with audiences here, Mileaf says, is the intrigue of witnessing the inner workings of a revered creative mind. "With the character of this very famous author, the idea of getting inside the private mind of someone famous who's worried about their legacy, that has some serious parallels in terms of the culture in Los Angeles."
     Because the premise for "Unexpected Man" relates to a chance encounter with a famous artist, Lloyd is asked if he's had any sightings of the great or near-great in his own life. Suddenly animated, he recalls spotting Orson Welles in a New York sushi bar. Taylor, in turn, remembers running "like the blazes" up the street so she could turn around and casually walk down Fifth Avenue to take a look at Greta Garbo.
     Lloyd then recalls being asked to fill in at the last minute in an off-Broadway play opposite one of his longtime heroes, Jose Ferrer. "The director gives me this script. I go to rehearsal next morning at some dingy, cold place in Times Square, walk up these stairs to this unheated, miserable rehearsal room, and there's Jose Ferrer ... Cyrano! I couldn't believe it. He's sitting, wrapped up in his coat, with his coffee, 10 o'clock, Sunday morning, waiting to rehearse. With me! I was just blown away!"
     Roused to comment, finally, on his character in "The Unexpected Man," Lloyd offers, "There's certainly the sense I can identify with him, just as an actor who's vulnerable to criticisms, to critics' opinions, from others. There's a lot of similarities. He's a man filled with insecurities. I can recognize that, the self-doubts, swinging back and forth. I guess, he's at the point in his life when he's not sure what kind of legacy he's leaving. He's got problems with his kids, he's kind of lonely and doesn't know what's in store for him."
     Taylor says, "Both these characters are in similar places in their lives--they're of an age--and they have certain things behind them that they've achieved and done. She's at a crossroads and doesn't really know what's left, and she's trying to cope with the fact that certain aspects have collapsed in her life. So she's thinking about what's it all totaling up to, and about the last period of her life, the twilight.
     "I look at her being in the twilight of her life, and he in his, as a very positive thing," she continues. "But unless they connect, the twilight alone is not desirable. And so, that's the question. She's at a time in her life when everything seems under control, but she's inexplicably very sad, and she's just trying to manage that.
     "The occasion of the play eventually becomes about these two people becoming increasingly aware of and focused on and hooked to each other, silently, in this train compartment, and how is that going to resolve? And it's quite suspenseful in a way. God, is that is going to work out? Is anything going to ever happen with them?"
     Lloyd takes one more shot at the essence of his character. "I think my guy wants to be truly accepted by someone, more than just critics, be really appreciated and accepted and loved for who he thinks he is. And he's running out of time."

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