CurtainUp
CurtainUp
The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings
HOME PAGE

SITE GUIDE

SEARCH


REVIEWS

REVIEW ARCHIVES

ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP

FEATURES

NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings


LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway

NYC Restaurants

BOOKS and CDs

OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Philadelphia
Elsewhere

QUOTES

TKTS

PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS

LETTERS TO EDITOR

FILM

LINKS

MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
A CurtainUp Review
Another Vermeer


Do you think I could be another Vermeer? — Han Van Meegeren

Maybe you should just concentrate on being the best possible Han van Meegeren?— Professor Korteling who had taught the technique of master craftsman like Vermeer to his students, but as a foundation not as a carte blanche to imitate, and worse yet, forge their work.
Another Vermeer
Austin Pendleton (Photo: Kim T. Sharp)
Forgeries have long fascinated and bedeviled the art world. Rumor has it that there are at least have a dozen Mona Lisas of uncertain provenance. Thus a play based on a notorious forgery case tried right after World War II is certainly the stuff of drama with its combination of history, scandal and police procedural. But while Bruce J. Robinson has dramatized actual events fairly accurately, he hasn't transformed his research into a particularly gripping or memorable play.

Another Vermeer is about the real twentieth century Dutch painter Han Van Meegeren. After having his work dismissed by Holland's most prominent critic, Dr. Abraham Bredius (another drawn from life character), Van Meegeren made his fortune as a forger of paintings by his seventeenth century forbear Jan Van Vermeer.

Vermeer also wasn't a major art icon during his life time. However, eventually connoisseurs valued his distinctive style and his surviving canvases became highly valued. Thanks to Van Meegeren's talent for turning out faux Vermeers, the long gone artist's small but increasingly appreciated legacy grew. The critic who panned Van Meegeren waxed publicly and ecstatically over a Vermeer that should have been signed Van Meegeren.

Naturally, Van Meegeren would have preferred to become rich and famous with his own original work. (He did obtain numerous portrait commissions). Yet he was pleased to pocket the profits to support his several wives and children and taste for good living even though it meant forsaking the pleasure of showing up the despised Bredius and other critics as know-nothings.

But the forger came acropper shortly after the end of the Second World War when he was brought up on the very serious criminal charge of having sold a Dutch National Treasure, "Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus," to Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. The only way to oe save his skin was to prove that what he'd sold to Gring was a forgery. To do so his prosecutors allowed him to spend his pre-trial incarceration duplicating his forgery. It is this tense episode that is the focus of Mr. Robinson's play .

Unfortunately, Mr. Robinson's Van Meegeren is a totally unsympathetic character and Austin Pendleton, usually a fine actor, doesn't help to make him either more likeable or more interesting with an overly eccentric and full of ticks portrayal. The introduction of ghostly visits from Vermeer and his former art teacher (a double role for Dan Cordle), a confrontation with the hated Bredius (Thom Christopher, in the play's best performance) and a relationship of sorts with a young prison guard (Justin Grace) who poses as his Christ model turn out to be oddly boring rather than suspenseful.

The scenes between Van Meegeren and the American Lieutenant (Christian Pederson) in charge of his case, have occasional bursts of intelligent, witty dialogue but they add inaccuracy to Another Vermeer's flaws. The charge of trading with the enemy was indeed serious enough to entail a long jail sentence but but never a death sentence. In a way Van Meegeren did get a death sentence, since upon having the charge changed to forgery which entailed a just a year in jail, the artist-forger dropped dead of a heart attack. Given Pendleton's hyper, coke sniffing as well as absinthe drinking Van Meegeren, small wonder.

There's a good play in here somewhere and Director Kelly Morgan and his designers have done their best to tease it out of the script. But if Dr. Bredius could come back as a theater critic, I doubt he'd treat it any better than he did Mr. Van Meegeren's paintings.

ANOTHER VERMEER
By Bruce J. Robinson
Directed by Kelly Morgan.
Cast: Austin Pendleton, Thom Christopher, Dan Cordle, Justin Grace and Christian Pedersen
Set design: Jeff Pajer
Costume design: Deborah Caney
Light: Tony Kudner
Sound: Kevin Lloyd
Production Manager: Ian Grunes
Production Stage Manager: Yurly Nayer
Abingdon's Dorothy Strelsin Theatre 312 W. 36th Street, 1st floor (between 8th and 9th Avenues). 212-868-4444
From 3/29/08; opening 4/06/08; closing 4/20/08.
Tickets are $20
Tuesday - Saturday at 7:30, Saturday at 2:00 and Sunday at 3:00.
Length: 1 hr 45 mins with intermission
General Admission
Reviewed by Elyse Sommer at 4/02 press preview


Try onlineseats.com for great seats to
Wicked
Jersey Boys
The Little Mermaid
Lion King
Shrek The Musical



The  Playbill Broadway YearBook
The Playbill Broadway YearBook


Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide
Leonard Maltin's 2007 Movie Guide


broadwaynewyork.com


amazon




©Copyright 2008, Elyse Sommer.
Information from this site may not be reproduced in print or online without specific permission from esommer@curtainup.com