Woody Allen’s Riverside Drive
MATTHEW WOLFSON is charmed by a performance you can “get lost in”.
Corpus Playroom, 7pm, Tuesday 30th April – Saturday 4th May, £6/£5
Riverside Drive is probably my favorite part of New York City. On one side of the street you see the worn and expensive residential buildings of the Upper West Side. On the other you see Riverside Park overlooking the Hudson. To walk there at mid-morning or sunset is to forget Manhattan’s hot and annoying density, and to appreciate why people have wanted to settle on this narrow island for three hundred years.
Understandably, Riverside Drive has been the site of a number of theatrical and cinematic romances. Predictably, Woody Allen’s play is not one of them. Allen has become a cultural icon by positioning himself squarely against New York’s romantic myths, to the point where his approach has become equally pro forma. For him, the city is a helpfully inflated microcosm of the late twentieth century human condition. Lots of neurotic, comfortably wealthy people run around bearing small grudges, needling fears and nagging disappointments. They worry about what other people think about them, buy things that don’t make them happy, and generally feel small inside.
Riverside Drive tells the story of one of these creatures, Jim Swain, a successful if unimaginative writer who’s come to this romantic street one autumn evening to break off an extramarital affair. If you didn’t know going into the play that Jim was a stand-in for Woody Allen, one look at his big glasses, high pants, Purell bottle and incessantly tapping foot pretty much gives the game away. Anyway, while Jim waits for his mistress, he’s accosted by a homeless man named Fred Savage, who chatters to him, coughs on him and occasionally manhandles him. Predictably, Fred is Jim’s alter ego, the impossibly well-read, creative “vagrant” who has visions, hears voices and is tapped into multiple conspiracies. Fred’s and Jim’s interactions boil down to an acidly-written, over-emphatic analysis of how Jim has boxed himself into a quietly self-loathing life, and why there’s really no other option for the rest of us.
Allen is far too dogged and insistent about his nihilism, but he’s an accomplished writer: the sharp dialogue is fast-moving and the crisply drawn characters are ebulliently crazy. This can make for mesmerizing viewing when skilled performers are onstage. Luckily, both Seb Sutcliffe as Jim and Saul Boyer as Fred are very, very skilled. They have the New York accents down perfectly, they’re fluid in their movements, and they’re completely comfortable onstage.
Ellen Robertson also makes a brief appearance as Jim’s mercenary but clueless mistress Barbara, painting a memorable portrait of oblivious ruthlessness. These are the kind of performances you can get lost in. Saul Boyer in particular is gripping as Fred. You actually don’t want to look away from his manically twitching face as he talks, veering with perfect control between staccato and stuttering like a person who’s crazy but also sort of inspired.
The play’s one flaw is Seb Sutcliffe’s characterization of Jim, the Woody Allen-stand in. It veers too much towards caricature, more than what’s provided for by the script. When Allen plays one of the roles he’s written for himself, he manages to humanize his distant worldview by making you sneakily fond of the character, nudging you to absolve the person of responsibility for his flaws because he’s pitiable, misdirected and funny. This doesn’t come across in Sutcliffe’s overwrought portrayal: you don’t feel pity, only contempt.