TIME EUROPE
June 26, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 25
Too Many Variations
A fine performance by Donald Sutherland can't save a flawed work
By JAMES INVERNE
French-Canadian actress Francine Racette is clearly a formidable woman. As her husband Donald Sutherland recalls, she tried to convince him back in 1986 to take a French play to New York. He declined, and La Cages Aux Folles became a Broadway smash. So when, two years ago, she asked him to do another French play, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's Enigmatic Variations, Sutherland says he dared not refuse.
But the star of films including M*A*S*H and Don't Look Now was unable to find a workable English translation. That's when his son Roeg, still a college student in his mid-20s, mentioned to his mother that he'd translated the play for his studies. She showed his work to his father, and the delighted Donald hired his son as the official translator. After sold-out runs in Los Angeles and Toronto, English producer Duncan Weldon has brought Sutherland senior and the $450,000 production to London's Savoy Theatre, in a new staging by Anthony Page.
Unfortunately, Enigmatic Variations does not quite hang together. A writer, Abel Znorko, who lives on an island, is visited by a journalist, Erik Larsen, who sets out to prove that Znorko's new book — about a couple who express their love solely through letters — is, despite Larsen's denial, autobiographical.
Schmitt seems determined to rival Elgar's Enigma Variations — Znorko's favourite musical work, from which the play derives its title — for the sheer volume of slants he can wring from a single theme. In an 80-minute play, that leaves precious little time for character development. This weakness in the work is also reflected in Page's direction, which denies the action any space to breathe.
Much of the writing is genuinely witty, even if Roeg Sutherland's translation sometimes lurches into self-conscious intellectualism. His father is wonderful as Znorko, wearing the cha-racter's pomposity with as much crumpled flamboyance as the purple tie that nestles against his cardigan. He handles the writer's ever-changing moods with aplomb, and might have further disguised the work's flaws had he been paired with a more charismatic performance than John Rubinstein supplies. It takes two to make a double-act, and Rubinstein never suggests the passions that quietly tear at Larsen. Sutherland had originally wanted his friend Christopher Plummer as his co-star; now that might have been something.
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June 26, 2000
COVER
The Redesigning of America
High style isn't highbrow. In fact, it's everywhere, for everyone, in everything from can openers to CD racks to cars
EUROPE
The Big Chill
The arrest of one of Russia's most outspoken media moguls casts doubt on Putin's promised "rule of law"
Identity Crisis
Greek church and state clash as new ID cards drop religious affiliation
AFRICA
"Whatever I Do, It Will Never Be Good Enough"
An interview with King Mohammed VI of Morocco
The Warm Embrace
Europe is showing signs that it's keen to better its often uneasy relations with the Maghreb nations
MIDDLE EAST
Chance for the Son To Shine
Syria's Bashar Assad can better his father's miserable legacy
BUSINESS
The Missing Link
A $4 billion engineering feat fulfils a century-old dream of joining Sweden and Denmark — and business is set to boom
TRENDS
Wheelie Good Fun
Shiny, compact and cool, scooters have become Europe's ubiquitous accessory
THE ARTS
Too Many Variations
A fine performance by Donald Sutherland can't save a flawed work
Irreconcilable Differences
Twins recount their lives on opposite sides of war
DEPARTMENTS
World Watch
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