FringeNYC 2013: The Mythmakers

Review by David Koteles · August 18, 2013

Two men share a whiskey in an empty space that is at once an office, a London home, and a frozen tundra. Here are two men who revere each other but truthfully share little in common besides a publisher. The relationship between these men is the subject of this two-hander, The Mythmakers, now playing in the New York International Fringe Festival. I’d like to say after 60 minutes in the company of J.M. Barrie and R.F. Scott I understood something about the relationship between these men, but truthfully I’m left with more questions than answers.

Each of these men made an extraordinary life for himself by playing out childhood dreams. Scottish-born J.M. Barrie imagines a life of never aging, and one much more exciting than his own; he of course famously created Peter Pan. Robert Falcon Scott is an explorer—the ultimate boyhood fantasy—heading the famous but ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition. In case you’re unfamiliar, Scott, a Commander in the Royal Victorian Order, is a better known historical figure in England, where he is simply known as Scott or Scott of the Antarctic.

We learn that as Scott lay dying in the ice, he wrote to Barrie, asking him to watch after his wife and son, Peter (yes, named after Barrie’s fictional boy who won’t grow up). Barrie will carry that letter in his breast pocket the rest of his life. It seems to be a rather complicated relationship, but we never learn why or how. Is it just a deep abiding friendship? Playwrights Rose MacLennan Craig and Richard White have created a cold Edwardian world where men can hold each other in their hearts but never act upon their instincts. Living in the 21st century, you ask yourself, is this “the love that dare not speak its name”? Unfortunately, even after an extremely wordy play, I have no idea. That’s because little happens, explicitly or implicitly, in this play besides a great deal of talking and a meeting of this two-man mutual admiration society.

The uncredited set design consists of numerous white sheets, as well as white sheets of paper, crumpled up balls of paper, a few simple pieces of furniture covered by white sheets, and an omnipresent steamer trunk. Much more symbolism can be found in the production than in the text. While the play is written to be staged simply, director Sarah Berger does find some stunning images. One particularly haunting image was that of the two men—one in London, one in the Antarctic—searching for each other in the darkness by lantern. We know they will never find each other, which makes it all the more poignant.

While we would like to think of Barrie as a dashing Johnny Depp character, in reality he was slight of frame and more weasel-like than debonair. It was believed Barrie suffered from a childhood bout of psychogenic dwarfism, accounting for his small frame and alleged asexuality. While his relationship with Scott isn’t presented as a sexual one, the authors do suggest that it was an admiration bordering on hero worship, which, frankly, feels like an unconsummated love affair. What’s not to love about Scott? He’s a handsome, tall, rugged explorer—everything Barrie is not. However, it’s unclear in the play what Scott saw in Barrie—perhaps his brilliant mind or his phenomenal notoriety at the time. However, that goes wholly unexamined here, leaving this relationship to feel uneven and even improbable.

As Barrie, Steve Hay brings a melancholy to the role. While he is sad, sweet and sickly, Hay is also a bit one note and doesn’t seem to have the power behind him to carry the show. Surely Barrie must have had more charisma to attract the fascinating and talented company he kept. Jonathan Hansler brings a ruddy-cheeked, Matthew Crawley-bland handsomeness to Scott. It is a quiet, self-assured performance, much, I imagine, like Scott himself. I would have liked to have seen more of connection between these two actors, to actually feel the energy bouncing back and forth, but they don’t reach that level of synchronicity.

What doesn’t work in this play is its lack of urgency. We never learn why this story is relevant. How does it speak to us today? What is the question of this play? What is revealed? How do these men affect each other? How do they influence each other’s work and lives? What are we to make of their unlikely friendship? The creators have given us an imagined neutral space where these characters can supposedly express themselves without judgment or the microscope of history, yet they didn’t use that opportunity to truly examine these characters’ underpinnings. As an audience member, I wanted to see, if only a glimmer of it, the magnetic force that bonded these two men. I can’t help but feel this was a missed opportunity.