Sight Unseen probes the role of the artist
Playwright uses biographical elements to weave an intricate plotline and complex characters
Each of the three roles offers room for powerful drama, though for drastically different reasons. Despite his veneer of meekness, Nick comes supplied with most of the show's best barbs, which Rogerson delivers with deliciously vicious composure.
Morella, in contrast, brings an astounding range of emotion to his role. For him, an actress like Hazlett is the ideal implosive foil - and, beyond that, endows her potentially weak role with a quiet complexity and confliction.
All this adds up to an awkward opening sequence which, fortunately, is nearly forgotten by the time Margulies' furious second act gets underway.
Like Everyman's production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal earlier in the year, this Sight Unseen is placed amid the appurtenances of a domestic comfort that clashes with its personages' anguished biographies. Set designer Daniel Ettinger, who also created the layout for the previous show, idealistically conceived Nick and Patricia's small house as a paragon of countryside comfort.
Switching between these trappings and the dark, angled walls that serve as an occasional backdrop slows the drama considerably. Then again, it's pleasant to sit back and reflect on characters who constantly appear on the extreme verge of eruption.
Making those characters' histories tangible is far more trying. De Raey's show is finely geared to emphasize the minute present details of Margulies' world-the whistling of a teapot, the opening of a door, a reproduction of a puzzling painting. Naturally this immediacy clashes with the long anecdotes that several of the playwright's inventions deliver.
Alas, even these stories serve Sight Unseen as argumentative fodder. Almost without exception, Margulies' characters - already solipsistic enough to be unapproachable - are invested with overriding artistic and cultural preoccupations that make their personalities supremely icy.
Perhaps it is fitting that Waxman's paintings seem, by description, to resemble over-sexed de Koonings. For the most part Sight Unseen's talking points amount to a run-through of issues that first smashed into the international mainstream with the rise of Abstract Expressionism in the middle of the 20th century.
Morella, in contrast, brings an astounding range of emotion to his role. For him, an actress like Hazlett is the ideal implosive foil - and, beyond that, endows her potentially weak role with a quiet complexity and confliction.
All this adds up to an awkward opening sequence which, fortunately, is nearly forgotten by the time Margulies' furious second act gets underway.
Like Everyman's production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal earlier in the year, this Sight Unseen is placed amid the appurtenances of a domestic comfort that clashes with its personages' anguished biographies. Set designer Daniel Ettinger, who also created the layout for the previous show, idealistically conceived Nick and Patricia's small house as a paragon of countryside comfort.
Switching between these trappings and the dark, angled walls that serve as an occasional backdrop slows the drama considerably. Then again, it's pleasant to sit back and reflect on characters who constantly appear on the extreme verge of eruption.
Making those characters' histories tangible is far more trying. De Raey's show is finely geared to emphasize the minute present details of Margulies' world-the whistling of a teapot, the opening of a door, a reproduction of a puzzling painting. Naturally this immediacy clashes with the long anecdotes that several of the playwright's inventions deliver.
Alas, even these stories serve Sight Unseen as argumentative fodder. Almost without exception, Margulies' characters - already solipsistic enough to be unapproachable - are invested with overriding artistic and cultural preoccupations that make their personalities supremely icy.
Perhaps it is fitting that Waxman's paintings seem, by description, to resemble over-sexed de Koonings. For the most part Sight Unseen's talking points amount to a run-through of issues that first smashed into the international mainstream with the rise of Abstract Expressionism in the middle of the 20th century.
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