The Broadway Theater Center is earning its title these days. The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production of The Lion in Winter is a bit of a throwback to the Golden Age of the Great White Way, when the flash and dazzle of a Broadway production was located in true star-power and snappy writing rather than computerized special effects or overblown rock-opera scores.
James Goldman’s script has been called a medieval version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but it’s much more in the league of “Knot’s Landing” – a very smart “Knot’s Landing” – where every new scene reveals a newly calculated power play between warring family members.
Here, we’re in 12th-century France instead of Seaview Circle. It’s Christmas, and King Henry II and his estranged wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, are briefly reunited along with their three sons. Family gatherings are always a challenge, of course, but when mom is home from 10 years in prison (sent there by dad) and she arrives to meet dad’s new mistress, well, this isn’t your usual Christmas dinner tension. The holiday is further complicated by the need for Henry to choose an heir. He has his favorite. Eleanor has hers. Let the games begin.
And the games are as juicy as anything you might encounter in Shakespeare: land, lovers and allegiances are all fair game in the bargaining. And each scene reveals a new twist in the various strategies.
But the core of the play is the relationship between Henry and Eleanor – royals to the core, but not without their emotional vulnerability. Here, Brian Mani and Tracy Michelle Arnold are a joy to watch. Goldman’s script is peppered with lively banter and more than a few zingers, and Mani and Arnold have a terrific time on the roller coaster. They are both actors of great power and intelligence, and director Michael Wright has tuned their scenes as if it were an elegant piece of chamber music.
As Henry, Mani is full of brawn and bluster, but not without charm. He’s the trombone to Arnold’s bassoon, sinuous and a bit reedy (she brings to mind Katherine Hepburn, who won an Oscar for the 1968 film), able to deflate Henry’s bombast with a raised eyebrow and a playfully sneered riposte. But their affection for each other is palpable (little things like prison sentences aside). The playful sparring and sighing nostalgia is a kick – these are actors and characters with personality, something on which Broadway once thrived.
This is a joint production between the Chamber Theatre and Marquette University, and the student actors (along with established performers like Marcus Truschinski and Lenny Banovez) hold their own quite well. I can’t think of a better theater education than the chance to work with and observe consummate pros like Mani and Arnold.
