"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, May 1, 2017

Rheingold Theatre: Season 2, Episode 31 – “The Awakening” (1954)

As far as Buster’s works go, this is one of the more unique entries:  a straight dramatic role, in this one-off TV adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat” (in the introductory remarks, host Douglas Fairbanks refers to it as “The Cloak,” so, until I heard Buster’s repeated mentions of his overcoat, I didn’t make the connection with the Gogol story they keep talking about in The Namesake.)  As a venture, I wouldn’t say it’s entirely successful, but it is interesting to see.

In a nonspecified autocratic society (everyone refers to the “Chief,” a nameless dictator, and exactly one character uses an eastern European accent – while the details are lightly-drawn, the desired takeaway is clear,) Buster plays a dedicated government clerk.  He works in the Department of Records, where he fastidiously but unsympathetically catalogues the applied-for wants of his fellow citizens.  He himself has little to yearn for until his tailor, declaring his threadbare overcoat beyond repair, tempts him with the prospect of a new one.  The clerk saves scrupulously, denying himself every small pleasure to get the coat, but although it’s every bit as wonderful as he’d hoped, he soon gets more than he bargained for.

It’s quite a serviceable dystopian story.  Given the time in which it was made, the anti-Communist allusions are pretty strong, and the overcoat provides an interesting vantage point for the clerk to be “awakened” to what his society is really about.  His transformation over the course of the piece seems fairly reasonable, and I like the idea of such a seemingly-small thing (although the overcoat is no small matter to him) being the catalyst for really dramatic changes in a man.  Overall, I’d say it’s decently made but not especially noteworthy.

Naturally, the big point of interest here is seeing Buster in a dramatic role (which Fairbanks highlights in his introduction.)  Now, it isn’t the only place to see Buster in a more serious part – the present-day stuff in “The Silent Partner” is played mostly straight, and that Christmas special he did for The Donna Reed Show really focuses on the sentimentality.  And really, even Buster’s silent stuff have little dramatic moments here and there.  However, I’d say most of those examples tend more toward “touching,” while “The Awakening” is more of an earnest drama.

And how does Buster do in a drama?  Well… To be honest, it’s a little hard for me to say.  Buster can’t rely on the usual tricks comedic actors use nowadays to make the switch to dramatic acting, because his comedic persona is already so low-key and stone-faced.  As such, there’s not a noticeably-large difference between how “comedy Buster” and “drama Buster” act, just a major lack of slapstick.  I can’t tell to what extent I’m not quite sold on this because I know it’s Buster and he still seems a lot like Buster – if I didn’t know who he was, for instance, and I watched this in a college literature class or something, what would I make of the central performance?  I don’t know.  I can say that I think Buster handles the climax, the scene with the Chief, very well.  There’s some intensity there, and it’s the scene where I’m most able to disassociate the character from Buster himself.

Warnings

Thematic elements and implied violence.

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