At intermission, I was ready to have “Quartermaine’s Terms” drawn and quartermained for the crime of being deadly dull. But watching the Germinal Stage Denver’s production is a bit like taking a time-released capsule of honey.
This story of seven mediocre teachers eventually blooms into an improbably sweet and lasting rumination about how small lives have the capacity to endure epic disappointments.
British playwright Simon Gray’s body of work is unapologetically derivative of Anton Chekhov and Harold Pinter – the latter a friend who directed Gray’s premiere production of this play in 1981. That means you can count on incessant sameness, numbing repetition and an intentionally inconclusive, unsatisfying end. And some people actually like watching that kind of thing.
The modest story, first staged at the Germinal in 1986, takes place in the faculty room of a third-rate English-language school where the instructors spew smiling, racist antipathy toward their foreign students. Gray was a longtime university lecturer, so he knows these characters well. They are middle-aged, highly educated intellectuals living out their failed existences on the dead end of the professional food chain.
All of them are flawed, most are petty, and all but one are decaying in different ways. The amusing fop of a title character (Chuck Wigginton) is losing his mental acuity, gossipy co-principal Eddie (David Fenerty) grows more physically incapacitated with each scene, and Melanie (Suzanna Wellens) is losing her moral grip.
It’s downright Brechtian that only one character comes out in better shape than he started. He’s Henry (Fred Lewis), a blathering windbag who loves to talk but in this self-absorbed crowd is unlikely to finish even one of his run-on sentences.
In such an ensemble piece, it’s noteworthy Gray has given his title over to St. John Quartermaine, the only enthusiastic and purely good soul among this backbiting bunch. Gray’s ultimate irony: that the one kind and invested teacher is being betrayed by his mind’s ability to remain kind and invested. It’s one thing that makes this tale simultaneously sorrowful and bitingly funny; at once tragic and absurd, cruel and compassionate.
The hallmark of any Ed Baierlein production is well-delineated characters. These expert players, including Jenny MacDonald as an unfulfilled young mother, Marc K. Moran as a self-absorbed wannabe writer (Kelsey Grammer’s part in the off-Broadway staging), and Todd Webster as an accident-prone temp, are uncomfortably recognizable in their ambivalent lack of fortitude.
It was once aptly said that what makes “Quartermaine’s Terms” remarkable is how Gray manages to indict genteel intellectuals “without ever having to raise his voice.” In the end, it’s not entirely convincing but, turns out, it’s not dull.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
*** | “Quartermaine’s Terms”
DRAMA|Germinal Stage Denver, 2450 W. 44th Ave.|Directed by Ed Baierlein|THROUGH MAY 7|8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 10 minutes|$14.75-$18.75|303-455-7108
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-John Moore
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