Albee’s ‘Occupant’: A Portrait of the Artist by an Old Friend

In their day, estimable portrait photographers such as Richard Avedon, Arnold Newman, and Robert Mapplethorpe all tried to capture the elusive Louise Nevelson on film. Now Edward Albee, a friend of Nevelson’s for 25 years, takes his shot at immortalizing the late Expressionist sculptor in “Occupant,” a 2001 play now belatedly receiving its world premiere production at the Signature Theatre Company. Between Mr. Albee’s expert characterization and Mercedes Ruehl’s ferocious incarnation of the larger-than-life Louise, “Occupant” practically raises Nevelson from the dead.Yet invigorating as it is to spend an evening in the company of a 20th-century diva on the scale of a Martha Graham or a Frida Kahlo, “Occupant” is an incomplete theatrical experience. The play is framed as a two-hour interview between a genial, square host (Larry Bryggman) and his cantankerous, cosmopolitan subject (who happens to be dead). But Mr. Albee never finds a satisfying way to tap into the tension between questioner and interviewee. He tries (halfheartedly) to generate mystery about when Louise is telling the truth and when she’s dissembling. But the interpersonal dynamic gives off no sparks. This is a two-hander without much of a second hand. It’s Louise’s show.Nonetheless, despite being hamstrung by the limits of his creaky format, Mr. Albee paints a riveting portrait. “Occupant” may be a straightforward valentine, but it’s a valentine to an extraordinarily complex and vivid personality.“That’s a tough lady,” Mr. Albee said of Nevelson in a 2002 interview. “She was a survivor.” Here, the playwright’s admiration for Nevelson’s brusque fortitude is palpable. From the moment Ms. Ruehl sweeps onto the stage, flaunting a long, open patchwork robe over some kind of kimono and a giant, sculptural necklace, we get a strong whiff of survivor. At the same time, the head scarf that obscures her hair focuses the eye on her pale face, with its pronounced cheekbones and heavy false eyelashes. In that face there is a poignant vulnerability. The face is as ambivalent as the costume, courtesy of costume designer Jane Greenwood, is emphatic.In a series of monologues, the formidable Ms. Ruehl gradually peels back Louise’s bristling layers. Nevelson’s Russian-Jewish family left the Ukraine for Rockland, Maine, in the early 1900s, when she was still a child. Her early life was textbook Old World immigrant: no glass in the windowpanes, her father scrimping to buy land, her mother sewing outlandish outfits for her that turned the Yankee girls’ heads. But there was something else: Louise’s unmistakable conviction that somehow she was different. Special.Acting on that sense of destiny, she married an upper-middle-class Jewish immigrant who brought her to New York and made her an American — and soon, a reluctant mother. The road from housewife to sculptor was to pass through decades of despair, poverty, and suicidal depression. And it ran through Picasso and primitive utilitarian art, through Diego Rivera and Japanese Noh robes, New York and Europe — to the 11th-hour discovery of her genius for working with scavenged wood.Throughout the long recitation of Louise’s journey, what mesmerizes Mr. Albee is her relentless urge to “be yourself. You’re going to find out who that ‘you’ is and you’re going to occupy that space if it kills you.” And truly, by the time tough-as-nails Louise gets to her apotheosis (aided by a breathtaking scenery change courtesy of set designer Christine Jones), there is a tangible sensation of triumph.What is remarkable about “Occupant” is how large a world it manages to summon using what is basically a monologue with occasional interruptions. Pam MacKinnon’s bare-bones staging typically places the two characters on side-by-side forward-facing plank benches, backed only by a facsimile of a Nevelson sculpture and a table with a water pitcher. Even so, Louise dominates. Tall and rangy, with big bony hands that carve the air when she’s excited, Louise is a life force.The bland interviewer, on the other hand, identified only as The Man, seems incapable of nuance. Wearing a suit in restrained check, sporting a head full of newscaster hair, he has the blithe zeal of the amateur biographer. The play endows him with little in the way of motivation, and Mr. Bryggman seems at a loss as he struggles to find a consistent character. At various points, he flatters his subject, shouts ugly things at her, and reprimands her, but it’s hard to ascertain why he’s doing any of those things. In the end, he is a functionary, marching her down memory lane in predictable cradle-to-grave fashion, or calling for an intermission halfway through.Mr. Albee seems to yearn at points to expand the scope of the play, to delve into the nature of memory, the slipperiness of facts, the elusiveness of identity. But these considerations take a backseat to the feral, sublime diva he’s created (and who is superbly realized by Ms. Ruehl). With Louise onstage, you can never forget that intellectualized ideas pale next to the knock-down, drag-out battle of everyday life.

Albee’s ‘Occupant’: A Portrait of the Artist by an Old Friend

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