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Mulgrew on Stage
Nov. 24th, 2004 01:28 amI love Kathryn Janeway. But Kate Mulgrew gets on my nerves.
In her interviews, she comes across as unbearably self-satisfied and smug. She's so clearly convinced of her own eloquence and intellectual depth -- and yet half the time her comments would earn her a "D" in any Logic 101 class, based as they often are on historical inaccuracies and unsupportable generalizations. I always come away from reading about her or seeing her interviewed with the feeling that if I knew her in person, I wouldn't be able to stand her.
So why do I find myself going to see her perform whenever I get the chance? I can't really explain it, except to say that I find her quite sensually compelling. She's not beautiful, but to me, she's amazingly attractive. Those bones, that voice. . . And then there's the memory of Janeway. I've always had a thing for powerful older women who radiate angst and sex. Mulgrew may not fit the bill, but Janeway does. And dammit, the two of them look just alike! So to get Janeway, I have to have Kate. But that's okay -- when I see her play a role, I'm seeing, not the annoying Mulgrew, but the strong, sexy, touching, arousing woman of my fantasies.
That's why, last night, I found myself heading to the Classic Stage Company on E. 13th Street in Manhattan. Mulgrew was appearing in a one-night-only staged reading of Friedrich Schiller's play "Mary Stuart." Mary, Queen of Scots, may not be Janeway, but she's definitely a powerful older woman with angst in her eyes.
The Classic Stage Company occupies a very small off-Broadway theatre. As a performance space, it's quite nice for intimate, character-driven shows, and it works very well for staged readings, in which the actors dress in street clothes and sit on stage reading/performing from scripts on stands in front of them. Someone else reads the major stage directions. Even though the actors don't memorize lines and blocking, they clearly spend a lot of time preparing their performances; they aren't just reading blind. Still, the short rehearsal time usually means that they aren't letter-perfect in their roles; they'll occasionally stumble over a line or two. If the errors don't happen often or get out of hand, I find them rather endearing.
Last night's performance was typical. The fairly large cast (12) was strong, with the two main roles of Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth the First well-played by Mulgrew and Caroline Lagerfelt, respectively. (Lagerfelt played Inger, Cheech Marin's wife, on the TV show "Nash Bridges.")
Kate wore a black jersey two-piece outfit, long-sleeved, calf-length, form-fitting, with a heavy rosary-like necklace to indicate the staunchly-Catholic Queen Mary. Her boots were hot -- high-heeled black leather lace-ups. She's rather thick about the middle, which is reassuring; I'm always glad to have walking evidence that you don't have to have a perfect body to be sexy as hell. After the intermission, she added a fringed gold shawl, which looked quite chic and matched her new hair color -- highlighted near-blond. (I'm not sure if the shawl was a planned part of the semi-costume, or was just KM's response to a rather chilly theatre.) She wore her hair up and had her reading glasses on a string, which, for me, rather undercut the overall elegance of the KM package. (I hate those eye-glass strings; they just scream "middle-aged." Once you give in to the eye-glass strings, it's only a matter of time until you start wearing sweater chains, folded plastic rain bonnets, clip-on sunglasses, tops with appliqued teddy-bears, and all the other old-lady accoutrements. Old-lady-hood is a state of mind; why ever put on its uniform?)
Though written in 1801, the play is in the tradition of formal Renaissance political tragedies, full of court intrigues, betrayals, and manipulative lords and advisors; the language is formal, the cadences vaguely Shakespearean. Schiller is a Mary-ite all the way, showing Mary Stuart as passionate, stalwart, even honorable (barring the little matter of having had her husband murdered). Elizabeth, on the other hand, is presented as full of fears and doubts, self-questioning, vacillating, easily swayed. She actually has a bigger role than Mary, but Mary's the star. Her part is meaty: three grand scenes, including one in which she humiliates Elizabeth, and her final one, in which she goes bravely and calmly to meet her death and her God. Mulgrew made Mary both queenly and vulnerable, wisely underplaying the death scene. She even injected a little humor when appropriate.
I don't know how the play would come across when actually staged: despite several powerful scenes, it is so talky and static that I imagine it would seem slow and ponderous. It might actually work better as a reading than as a full-fledged production.
All in all, it was a satisfying evening. As herself, Kate Mulgrew may or may not be as insufferable she appears in interviews. But when she has the chance to go into sexy-angsty-Janeway-Queen mode, well. . .nobody does it better.
In her interviews, she comes across as unbearably self-satisfied and smug. She's so clearly convinced of her own eloquence and intellectual depth -- and yet half the time her comments would earn her a "D" in any Logic 101 class, based as they often are on historical inaccuracies and unsupportable generalizations. I always come away from reading about her or seeing her interviewed with the feeling that if I knew her in person, I wouldn't be able to stand her.
So why do I find myself going to see her perform whenever I get the chance? I can't really explain it, except to say that I find her quite sensually compelling. She's not beautiful, but to me, she's amazingly attractive. Those bones, that voice. . . And then there's the memory of Janeway. I've always had a thing for powerful older women who radiate angst and sex. Mulgrew may not fit the bill, but Janeway does. And dammit, the two of them look just alike! So to get Janeway, I have to have Kate. But that's okay -- when I see her play a role, I'm seeing, not the annoying Mulgrew, but the strong, sexy, touching, arousing woman of my fantasies.
That's why, last night, I found myself heading to the Classic Stage Company on E. 13th Street in Manhattan. Mulgrew was appearing in a one-night-only staged reading of Friedrich Schiller's play "Mary Stuart." Mary, Queen of Scots, may not be Janeway, but she's definitely a powerful older woman with angst in her eyes.
The Classic Stage Company occupies a very small off-Broadway theatre. As a performance space, it's quite nice for intimate, character-driven shows, and it works very well for staged readings, in which the actors dress in street clothes and sit on stage reading/performing from scripts on stands in front of them. Someone else reads the major stage directions. Even though the actors don't memorize lines and blocking, they clearly spend a lot of time preparing their performances; they aren't just reading blind. Still, the short rehearsal time usually means that they aren't letter-perfect in their roles; they'll occasionally stumble over a line or two. If the errors don't happen often or get out of hand, I find them rather endearing.
Last night's performance was typical. The fairly large cast (12) was strong, with the two main roles of Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth the First well-played by Mulgrew and Caroline Lagerfelt, respectively. (Lagerfelt played Inger, Cheech Marin's wife, on the TV show "Nash Bridges.")
Kate wore a black jersey two-piece outfit, long-sleeved, calf-length, form-fitting, with a heavy rosary-like necklace to indicate the staunchly-Catholic Queen Mary. Her boots were hot -- high-heeled black leather lace-ups. She's rather thick about the middle, which is reassuring; I'm always glad to have walking evidence that you don't have to have a perfect body to be sexy as hell. After the intermission, she added a fringed gold shawl, which looked quite chic and matched her new hair color -- highlighted near-blond. (I'm not sure if the shawl was a planned part of the semi-costume, or was just KM's response to a rather chilly theatre.) She wore her hair up and had her reading glasses on a string, which, for me, rather undercut the overall elegance of the KM package. (I hate those eye-glass strings; they just scream "middle-aged." Once you give in to the eye-glass strings, it's only a matter of time until you start wearing sweater chains, folded plastic rain bonnets, clip-on sunglasses, tops with appliqued teddy-bears, and all the other old-lady accoutrements. Old-lady-hood is a state of mind; why ever put on its uniform?)
Though written in 1801, the play is in the tradition of formal Renaissance political tragedies, full of court intrigues, betrayals, and manipulative lords and advisors; the language is formal, the cadences vaguely Shakespearean. Schiller is a Mary-ite all the way, showing Mary Stuart as passionate, stalwart, even honorable (barring the little matter of having had her husband murdered). Elizabeth, on the other hand, is presented as full of fears and doubts, self-questioning, vacillating, easily swayed. She actually has a bigger role than Mary, but Mary's the star. Her part is meaty: three grand scenes, including one in which she humiliates Elizabeth, and her final one, in which she goes bravely and calmly to meet her death and her God. Mulgrew made Mary both queenly and vulnerable, wisely underplaying the death scene. She even injected a little humor when appropriate.
I don't know how the play would come across when actually staged: despite several powerful scenes, it is so talky and static that I imagine it would seem slow and ponderous. It might actually work better as a reading than as a full-fledged production.
All in all, it was a satisfying evening. As herself, Kate Mulgrew may or may not be as insufferable she appears in interviews. But when she has the chance to go into sexy-angsty-Janeway-Queen mode, well. . .nobody does it better.