Jonathan Balton, the key figure of “The Film Society,” is an easygoing soul who tries to placate everybody. Don’t make waves — that could be his motto.
But that’s not easy when you teach at a boys’ academy in 1970 South Africa and everything around you is changing. The school is strapped for cash, the old guard is helplessly stuck in the past, and the new one grapples with the changes sweeping both the school and the country.
Playwright Jon Robin Baitz was just 27 when this drama premiered in 1987, and it’s an ambitious effort — though far from the sophisticated storytelling of “Other Desert Cities,” his Tony-nominated, Pulitzer-finalist hit. Here, he’s juggling heavy themes and conflicts without developing them in a satisfying way. Worse, the show has little dramatic momentum — and director Jonathan Silverstein’s limp, musty staging doesn’t help.
Of course, it’s a challenge to be gung-ho when your lead’s as wishy-washy as Jonathon (Euan Morton, the former Boy George of “Taboo”), who screens escapist fare as head of the Blenheim School for Boys’ film
society.
Jonathon acts as middleman between the school’s leaders and his teacher friends Terry and Nan Sinclair (David Barlow and Mandy Siegfried). Headmaster Neville Sutter (Gerry Bamman) and the others are appalled by the Sinclairs’ efforts to reach out to the black community. Jonathon hates being stuck in the middle — as much as he can find the passion to hate something. “I just want a bit of peace!” he wails.
But ultimately, he can’t keep his head in the sand much longer and must take a side.
Baitz is at his best describing people who compromise. Terry, who’s been fired for his activism, cravenly tries to get his job back. Swallowing his pride, Sutter strikes a bargain with Jonathon’s rich mom (Roberta Maxwell) to save the school.
But those developments don’t hit hard.
One problem is that we don’t get much of a sense of time or place. There are no students or blacks onstage, and set designer Steven C. Kemp’s biggest nod to Africa is on a back wall, where swatches of traditional kente cloth peek from underneath a fading British flag.
Another issue is that large chunks of the play are spent on static conversations, made worse by the oddly disaffected cast. The big exception is Maxwell, who brings a regal, sardonic disdain to her underwritten part. Only when she’s onstage is there some spice in that bland porridge of a show.