THEATER REVIEW : Execution of ‘Scenes’ a Talky Tour de Force

There are two important reasons to see “Scenes From an Execution” at the Mark Taper Forum: Juliet Stevenson and Frank Langella.

The play by Howard Barker is part freak show, part grandly histrionic vehicle for these uncommonly magnetic actors, particularly the amazing Stevenson, who is making her U.S. stage debut.

It has a short, complex message imparted in two densely packed hours of florid talk, not to be mistaken for real poetry, but effective on the hoof.

It’s effective thanks to the actors who do the talking--and because the swift, uninterrupted flow of Robert Allan Ackerman’s staging sees to it that the audience does not come up for air.

Wise move. Allowing the action to pause long enough for assessment might be dangerous to the health of this gaudy, flashy play. Having commandeered the life and some of the circumstances of Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, Barker has adapted them to make his own satirical statement about the unending conflict between art and politics.

He is nothing if not direct, and the issue is raised in the first line spoken by Urgentino, Doge of Venice (Langella) to Galactia (Stevenson, in the Gentileschi role).

Urgentino comments that he can’t “see” his brother in the sketch he has commissioned from her of a famous battle. Galactia points out that the brother, in the painting, “is 14 feet high.”

“I know you are an artist and I am a politician,” states Urgentino in the sort of breezy tones that can never be trusted. A second later he gets down to brass tacks or, in this case, military brass: “My brother is admiral of the fleet.”

And the lines are drawn.

Barker’s play takes pains to debate the issue of political pressure and censorship vs. artistic freedom from all angles, with plenty of strong dramatic color and a collection of vividly plumed characters (the costumes by Dona Granata range in period and style to show the unchanging nature of the conflict).

The characters themselves are more predictable, representing the military, critical, religious or populist establishments. They range from Urgentino’s dull brother (Ben Hammer), to the changeable critic Gina Rivera (Natalija Nogulich), the pernicious cardinal Ostensibile (a subtle Richard Frank) and assorted officials, politicos and men-on-the-street. They sport whatever other ersatz Italianized monikers fit Barker’s sense of the tongue-in-cheek, such as Pastaccio (Robert Machray) or Lasagna (Tony Abatemarco).

Galactia (a contraction for the galaxy?) is an iconoclast and a revolutionary, an artist and a woman with five daughters who survives well outside convention. The grown daughters shown here, Supporta (Olivia d’Abo) and Dementia (Jodie Markell), live up to their names, while Galactia, at the moment, is having an affair with her competition--a hunk named Carpeta (Michael Cumpsty).

This serves to set up the added argument of good art vs. bad, but the play’s focus is her clash with Urgentino and his religious-political machine--a clash for which she is severely punished, then cunningly reprieved as new-found celebrity obliterates guilt and makes her the toast of 17th-Century Venice.

Barker doesn’t miss a target or a wrinkle, including the case of the sad sack Prodo (Don Amendolia), a survivor of the battle in question, left with an exposed bowel and a crossbow bolt stuck in his head.

He has parlayed his freakish state into a money-making proposition, raising the specter of who the real freaks are: this simpleton making the best of a bad situation or the monsters who sent him into the fray in the first place.

Put such self-conscious material in the hands of an actress as immensely gifted as Stevenson, and the results are dazzling. Following Barker’s play is not always easy, because the language is so thickly layered, but following Stevenson’s impetuous, impulsive, muscular and lucid performance is to be part of it, to be swept along by her intelligence and vigor. This young British actress is her own person, but in the versatile, mercurial tradition of Peggy Ashcroft or Edith Evans, and Los Angeles must relish this great chance to see her.

Langella is the perfect foil for Stevenson, in a role that makes good use of his own charismatic gifts. Together they endow Barker’s script--which is more Christopher Fry than Christopher Marlowe--with an incandescence it might not otherwise possess.

Ackerman’s sly choice of ironic Vivaldi and other composers with which to lard the scene transitions, and the darkly handsome Venetian environs (Richard Macdonald’s scenic concept, made real here by Yael Pardess and Arden Fingerhut) fill out the experience. But there’s no getting around whose show this is. Barker may have plenty to say (he does), but we listen only because of her.

“Scenes From an Execution,” Mark Taper Forum, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends May 9. $26-$32; (213) 365-3500, (714) 740-2000, TDD (213) 680-4017. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes. Juliet Stevenson: Galactia

Michael Cumpsty: Carpeta

Don Amendolia: Prodo

Frank Langella: Urgentino

Olivia d’Abo: Supporta

Jodie Markell: Dementia

Ben Hammer: Cesare Suffici

Natalija Nogulich: Gina Rivera

Richard Frank: Ostensibile

Robert Machray: Pastaccio/Jailer

Tony Abatemarco: Workman/Mustafa/Official/Lasagna

Carlos Papierski: Workman/First Sailor

Alexander Enberg: Workman/Second Sailor

Greg Naughton: Workman/Third Sailor

Francois Giroday: Sordo/Man in Next Cell

Michael Forest: Man

Francia DiMase, Marcia Firesten, Roger Kern: Ensemble

A Mark Taper presentation in association with Andre Pastoria. Playwright Howard Barker. Director Robert Allan Ackerman. Scenic concept Richard Macdonald. Sets Yael Pardess. Lights Arden Fingerhut. Costumes Dona Granata. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Movement Michele Assaf. Production stage manager James T. McDermott. Stage manager Jill Ragaway.