Time and the Conways (Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre) by J.B. Priestly #RTCCONWAYS
Elizabeth McGovern as the widowed matriarch of this clan of six mostly grown children, is, in 1919 a beautiful, somewhat self-absorbed, yet loving mother. Mrs. Conway has no inclinations to hide her light under a bushel or her preference for her children according to their most marked characteristics. Kay (played with a lovely uncertainty by Charlotte Parry), whose 21st birthday party is the setting for the 1919 story, is the ‘creative’ one, who writes. Hazel (a completely self-assured and somewhat cruel Anna Camp) is the beauty in whom Mrs. Conway sees her clearest reflection. Madge (Brooke Bloom walking the tight-rope between utter seriousness and farce) is the stern one whose thirst for social justice is unquenchable and whose chance for romance is casually smashed by her mother’s carelessness. Robin (Matthew James Thomas as a boisterous, charming braggart) is the obviously favorite son, home a hero from the war. Alan (a sweet and subdued Gabriel Ebert) the oldest son, is a kind soul, a lowly clerk and a crushing disappointment. Carol (a luminous Anna Baryshnikov) is the lovely and beloved youngest child whose warmth and kindness shed a radiant light over the whole family.
The Conways are, at the story’s beginning, wrapped in the rightness and the self-righteousness of their place in the world. Of course, Kay will become a famous author, Hazel will marry into a title, Madge will run her own school and Robin will be a smashing success in sales. The only two for whom no expectations are held out are Alan and Carol. He will, surely, always disappoint and her options are limitless.
The jump to 1937 (and subsequent return to 1919) is a brilliant bit of stage-craft by set designer Neil Patel.
In 1937 what is most marked is how far most of the family has fallen. Called home by their mother, who has become nasty and churlish; given to excessive drinking and mean ‘truth telling’, to discuss ‘family business’. Kay is single and as bitter as acid. Her glamourous writing career in the big city exists in the form of puff pieces for a newspaper. She has squandered her love and youth, and it appears her hope, on a married man. Hazel has married Ernest Beevers (played as initially timid and smitten, later bellicose and bullying by Steven Boyer) a man on whom she couldn’t look far enough down in 1919. The price for her lovely clothes, money, children and loss of dreams is to live in the sticks with someone she can barely tolerate. Robin is a raging alcoholic and never-do-well who has ruined the life of his vapid wife and barely knows his children but still burns as the brightest light in his mother’s eyes. Madge is an angry and spinsterish schoolmarm who has lost her verve, her purpose and any kindness that may once have lived in her. Alan and Carol are unchanged. He, because he still sees the world, everything and everyone in it through rose-colored lenses; she because she is frozen in time having died before she turned twenty.
This meeting soon turns to melee. Mrs. Conway needs money and takes their inability to help out on her children by shooting them with poisonous verbal darts. The only person with any cash to spare, Ernest, exacts his revenge for no-one in the family thinking he was worthy of being a member by making it clear that he will never part with any of it to save them. Kay, distraught has a conversation with Alan in which he tells her that all time and experience are simply slices of the same existence.
Back to the same night in 1919 where the wisps of this conversation and this future catch at the edges of Kay’s consciousness like a forgotten dream and a haunting nightmare.
Time and the Conways asks about the choices we make, the futures we are so certain of, the foibles of family, the reality of being human and the nature of time and space. Good questions all.