Ok, hold on, I may have spoken too soon about giving the Tony to Al Pacino without even seeing what else there’s going to be.
There's still no doubt--Al Pacino is giving one of those performances so powerful that it pins you to your chair, you can't move, then flings you skyward as he takes you soaring. It's utterly amazing.
But wait. You only have to go around the corner, down Shubert Alley to The Music Box, to be enthralled by the next magnificent performance of the season (how much do you love Broadway when it just comes at you like that?). If you haven't heard yet--Mark Rylance is killing them in La Bête. Killing' them! It is the kind of tour-de-force performance that unearths all your sense of awe and delight at the very craft of acting. His delivery and timing are simply superb.
In rhyming verse, his opening 25-minute monologue is a thing so precise, yet so daringly vertiginous, that I dare say, it approaches perfection. Making his Moliere-esque entrance, Valere (Rylance) is immediately disgusting. He's still carrying two quartered slices of melon from dinner, and spits all too large chunks of it with his first words. Not allowing you to even have your laugh yet, he spits more word-born melon only moments later, more still a few words on. It seems he's always spitting something with his long-winded pronouncements. You can't believe the scatological things he does, quite blithely, without a moment's pause in his discourse. It's really quite amazing--you cannot believe he is even doing these things.
How is it possible to not only keep your attention during a 25-minute monologue--but for it to grow ever rapt as you are drawn powerless to the end? I don't know. One thing I do know is that David Hyde Pierce has to be the best listener on Broadway. How in the world does he listen so eloquently? It is enthralling to watch these two masters of their craft stand in such equipoise.
Not that they quite needed it, but Joanna Lumley brightens further the proceedings. She's terrific as the annoyed queen, sitting and judging the players as they don their masks.
All I can say is get Yee to The Music Box theater. You don't see a thing like this every day.
Ron Gallen
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