'The Night Heron' offers poesy and pain

NEW YORK, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Experiencing British playwright Jez Butterworth's new drama, "The Night Heron," is like eating an artichoke, getting a morsel of information with each bite-size leaf that increases the appetite for a belated revelation of just what has been going on in this intriguing whodunit.

Butterworth, 34, established himself as a playwright to watch with his award-winning hip underworld comedy "Mojo" and the screenplay for the film "Birthday Girl" starring Nicole Kidman. His new screenplay, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, is currently being filmed in New York.

"Mojo," which has been staged around the world in 30 languages and made into a film, was given its American premiere by the Off Broadway Atlantic Theater Company under the direction of Neil Pepe. This group is also presenting "The Night Heron" under Pepe's deft direction. The play had its world premiere at the Royal Court Theater in London last year.

British critics were left groping for explanations as to the meaning of the "The Night Heron, set in a rude wood hovel in the fenland marshes near Cambridge, England, where two penniless, recently fired university campus gardeners are subsisting on a on a diet of wild rabbits. They take in a woman ex-convict as a boarder to help make ends meet, and the plot begins to thicken.

The seemingly brighter of the two gardeners, Griffin, is hell-bent on entering a poetry contest with a large cash prize, although his writing talents are minimal. The other gardener, Wattmore, a bumbling neurotic, offers little help in the project, but the new boarder - Bolla Fogg by name - does her best by kidnapping a male Cambridge student whom she supposes has studied poetry and can help Griffin write a prize-winning entry.

If this sounds like a simplistic plot, it is - and isn't, as is often the case in plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, to whom Butterworth has been likened. Director Pepe said in an interview that the play is all about telling a story "without explaining but by doing and not pandering to an audience." Butterworth has been quoted as saying he writes "to lose an audience, initially."

So much information about Griffin and Wattmore's pasts is withheld that we are surprised when these working class characters express themselves poetically and are informed about such esoteric subjects as the art of Russian Orthodox church iconostases. By putting clues together, we are gradually made aware that these two men are not as harmless as they seem and are as well acquainted with crime as Bolla Fogg.

There is no more bizarre moment in any recent or current production on the New York stage than when the Cambridge student rouses himself from the pill-induced stupor in which he was kidnapped to spout a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley while standing stage center completely nude. This scene creates a vision that is almost dreamlike with supernatural overtones that transcends common sensationalism.

Clark Gregg turns in a remarkably sympathetic performance as Griffin, a man of some charisma cornered by life but refusing to give in to defeat. Chris Bauer plays the already defeated Wattmore, who spends his time taping gardening tips for a non-existent radio show, in an almost catatonic state that is his shield against reality. The two actors play off one another beautifully.

Mary McCann, one of the New York stage's most versatile actresses, is padded and punk-coiffed for the role of Bolla, the tough, stolid intruder who likes her landlords enough to want to help them. She gives a virtuoso performance that is at all times riveting but just menacing enough to avoid an empathetic reaction to her character from the audience.

Others in the cast are Damian Young, playing a friend from Cambridge, Jordan Lage and Jim Frangione as police officers, and Joe Stipek as the Cambridge student.

Walt Spangler's rustic set, whose roof beam extends beyond the stage, is unbearably drab except for the Byzantine-style church screen depicting "The Last Judgment" that Griffin treasures. The dim, even depressing lighting has been designed by Tyler Micoleau. Laura Bauer has fashioned the ragtag costumes, and Stephen Warbeck has provided some effectively atmospheric original music.