February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
In the future, Matthew Broderick might do well to avoid revivals of mediocre plays from the United Kingdom.
Several seasons back, using a wretchedly phony Irish accent, he played, Danny, the killer who travels with a severed head in a hatbox, in a poor production of Emlyn Williams’ “Night Must Fall.” The experience was apparently so wounding that Broderick told a colleague that he thought his career was over. Then along came Mel Brooks and “The Producers,” and everything changed.
Now, after a considerable absence from the stage, the actor is back heading the cast in a new Roundabout Theatre Company production of Christopher Hampton’s “The Philanthropist,” a severely undernourished philosophical comedy which ran on Broadway for 64 performances in l97l, with Alec McCowen as Philip, the character being played so vacuously now by Broderick.
The puzzlingly listless production directed by David Grindley seems almost intentionally designed to spotlight the text’s weaknesses, as opposed to whatever small strengths the play may still possess.
Hampton is an interesting writer who has undertaken a variety of projects, with numerous adaptations alongside his original plays. Currently, he’s represented on Broadway by his adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s “The God of Carnage,” having converted the original language from French to English and the locale from Paris to New York.
Even his original works frequently have ties to other material. “The Philanthropist,” for example, has its roots in Moliere’s “The Misanthrope,” although it isn’t a direct adaptation of the French classic, but rather an ironic reversal of the ideas with which Moliere was dealing.
Philip, Hampton’s proxy for Moliere’s Alceste, is a truth-telling academic who is mainly misunderstood by the writers and intellectuals who surround him and whose attitudes and concerns he finds so questionable. As performed by the stiffly miscast Broderick, Philip seems like such a poor fit in the company of the successful individuals he calls his friends that he could easily pass for a visitor from a distant planet.
Over the course of the last few years, the actor has made something of a specialty of playing awkward, physically inhibited, even nerdy, characters. Sometimes it works, as in “The Producers,” and sometimes it doesn’t. The unfortunate revival of “The Philanthropist” is an extreme example of what happens when his work doesn’t register.
Anna Madeley is effective as Philip’s fiancee, Celia, as is Jennifer Mudge, as Araminta, who manages to seduce him in a detached, casual sort of way. Jonathan Cake scores as Braham, a smug novelist, as does the energetic Steven Weber as his friend, Donald.
Matthew Broderick was originally scheduled to star this season in “The Starry Messenger,” a new play by his close friend, Kenneth Lonergan. The play turned out not to be ready, and was replaced by “The Philanthropist.” While probably necessary, the substitution was unsatisfactory in the extreme.