As the Romans used to say: “Caveat emptor,” or, “Let the buyer beware.”
In other words, the goods you’re considering are not guaranteed. In Paragon Theatre’s “Sight Unseen,” this advice applies to individuals.
Painter Jonathan, his former college sweetheart, Patricia, and Patricia’s present-day husband, Nick, grapple with art and relationships they have acquired “sight unseen.”
Donald Margulies’ 1992 Pulitzer Prize nominee begins in the present when Jonathan, now a successful artist, visits Patricia and Nick in the English countryside on the eve of his first major European exhibition. It is an awkward meeting that recalls bad feelings from the breakup of Jonathan and Patricia’s earlier romance.
In bursts, the scenes drift forward four days and backward 17 years. Later, we see Jonathan and Patricia at the moments when their relationship commenced and when it ended, yet the story does not include even one scene in which we see the pair during their love affair and only one scene in which there is even a hint of friendliness between them.
Therein lies the rub in this production, because we never get the feeling from Jonathan (Marty Lindsey) and Patricia (Carolyn Valentine) that they were once in love. Without some subtextual reference to their former attraction, the stakes are never high enough for the audience to care about them.
This lack of chemistry unravels the playwright’s carefully constructed emotional matrix, depleting the script of its inner sense, degrading Jonathan’s original arc from idealistic artist to commercial contractor into a steady state of mere selfishness, and Patricia’s original arc, from optimistic dilettante to disillusioned realist into one of merely a fool.
This approach, whether a directorial choice or acting issue, sells the story short, given the complexities and layering that Margulies provides for the characters. When they meet, Jonathan is forced to grapple with his insularity as a Jew living in Brooklyn in the wake of the Holocaust. This issue also plays a part in the end of their relationship, yet in an interview with a Grete (Suzanne Favette), a German art critic 15 years later, Jonathan is offended by her insinuation that he is a Jewish, not an American, artist.
Jonathan makes a good case that only one early painting references his ethnicity, so the implication is that he has secularized his perspective, perhaps selling his soul in the process; but if there was a spiritual aspect to Jonathan’s youthful insularity, we don’t see it in Lindsey’s portrayal, where it comes off as intellectual posturing.
When we meet Patricia in the present, we learn that post-college, she has settled for marrying Nick, a fellow anthropologist, in order to become a permanent resident of England, far from American values and a love affair that, however serendipitously it started, ended devastatingly for her.
Despite this derailment, Valentine gives Patricia a brave front when Jonathan shows up after all these years, yet reveals the lingering pain that makes her unwilling to forgive him. Later, this emotional benchmark informs the only cathartic moment in the production, when Patricia is asked (by Nick) to give up the painting Jonathan had done of her when they first met.
As Patricia describes Nick, he is a socially inept though occasionally insightful scientist, but there is more to him than this dismissive and disarmingly blunt comment indicates. In Jarred Holbrook’s portrayal, Nick is a man who knows his shortcomings and is willing to take Patricia’s emotional charity when he can get it, yet is nevertheless shrewd when it comes to protecting what’s his. Holbrook’s clarity is at times dampened when his Norfolk dialect drifts past the representational and get swallowed in the region’s bogs and fens.
As Grete, Favette’s German accent holds steady, though her performance borders on caricature, distracting from the seriousness of the issues the journalist is raising and what should be a defining moment in Jonathan’s career. Instead, the sequence reads more like a satire on criticism and the volatility of the artistic temperament.
While Margulies commentary on the commercialization of art occasionally scores, it is hardly news in an age where most everyone and everything have their price, opening our eyes to how crass we have become in the past 16 years (two presidential administrations).
In sum, this production’s issues and the script’s age lend an aura of pretentiousness to the discussion of art and a sophomoric air to the purging of the young writer’s demons. What should have been compelling here is Jonathan’s journey from his youthful idealism to his present soulless state, but this arc remains “Sight Unseen.”
Bob Bows also reviews theater for Variety, for KUVO 89.3 FM, and for . He can be reached at bbows@coloradodrama.com.
“Sight Unseen” ** (out of four stars)
Contemporary drama. Presented by Paragon Theatre at the Crossroads Theatre, 2590 Washington St. Written by Donald Margulies.
Directed by Mare Trevathan. Starring Marty Lindsey, Carolyn Valentine, Jarrad Holbrook, and Suzanne Favette. 2 hours, 5 minutes.
Through May 31. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. $17-19. 303-300-2210 or
