Story of pride, betrayal makes 'General' riveting

Theater Review
by Hedy Weiss, Theater Critic

August 29, 2006

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A great page in history is the backdrop for Richard Nelson's play "The General From America," which opened this weekend in a TimeLine Theatre production notable for its incisive writing, its crystalline direction by Louis Contey, and the ability of its top-notch cast to make historical drama feel completely of the moment.

There is something else, too, that gives Nelson's work a compulsively watchable quality. It is the way it homes in on the intense and intimate human drama involved: the fierce competition between generals; the rampant careerism of young officers; the household tensions among a husband, his young wife and a live-in sister-in-law; a fateful encounter between a spy and his captors; the deep loathing between grown men hellbent on protecting their most passionate attachments; the edgy intellectual and moral combat between those on opposite sides of a revolution. And of course this being the story of Benedict Arnold, traitor, there also is the matter of the terrible psychic punishment that invariably comes with betrayal.

True, a certain amount of backstory is required to fully appreciate the story being told. But it is well worth making the effort to absorb.

The year is 1779. The British still control New York. The Americans hold Philadelphia. Gen. George Washington (David Parkes) is under siege by his fellow generals. And the outcome of the Revolutionary War is still in doubt.

As for Washington's fellow general, Benedict Arnold (Terry Hamilton), he is bitter, angry and besieged, too: He has won a crucial battle against the British at Saratoga, N.Y., he has sustained crippling leg injuries in combat, and he has advanced money for supplies for his troops but has not been reimbursed. What's more, Arnold is now being investigated by Alexander Hamilton (Tom Bateman), a young and exceedingly self-possessed aide to Washington, about financial improprieties and other more serious charges.

Arnold expects Washington to support him in the case -- out of both friendship and an abiding respect for his military service. But Washington, whose primary goal is to win the war, strikes a compromise in an effort to maintain some semblance of unity among all the fractured rebel enclaves.

A high-stakes time

So, it's politics as usual, but in a most unusual, high-stakes time. The whole affair was enough to push Arnold over the edge -- to the point where he decided to switch sides and (in exchange for fair compensation) give the British information that might assure their victory. The plan, however, was bungled, and Arnold ended up being reviled and mistrusted by both sides.

After a somewhat dense start, Nelson's play unspools in scenes that are crisp, clear, emotionally pitch-perfect and infused with just the right edge of sexual energy. The actors all but disappear inside their characters.

Hamilton's masterful portrayal of Arnold is central here. Just watch his face turn into a mask of tense politeness as he is grilled about his improprieties. See it relax in the manly company of Washington. Or feel the pain as he stands, stone-faced, while receiving a humiliating tongue-lashing from Sir Henry Clinton (Nigel Patterson), an effete British officer and closeted homosexual who wants desperately to save the life of the young actor-officer John Andre (Stephan Madar), who served as go-between and was captured by the rebels.

Parkes' bristling portrayal of the pragmatic, impeccably honest Washington -- a general deeply tired of war -- climaxes with a sensational verbal lancing of Arnold, the fellow warrior he respected but misjudged. As for Patterson, he is full of white heat as a man who has long suppressed his more passionate nature.

Madar endows Andre with just the right combination of youthful ego, talent, enthusiasm and arrogance, while Bateman's Alexander Hamilton is quite different -- the model of the smart, artfully self-controlled, upwardly mobile hotshot.

There are just two female characters in the play: Peggy Arnold (Mackenzie Kyle), Benedict's much younger, beautiful, flirtatious and quite pregnant wife, who much prefers British style to the more rustic American, and Hannah Arnold (Jennifer Avery), his highly protective and colonizing sister. But they possess the fire and shrewdness of a whole army.

Their dueling allegiances to Arnold create genuine sparks, with Kyle full of feminine wiles and possessed of the same turncoat ease as her husband, and Avery (who has turned in a slew of exceptional performances lately) ferociously territorial and controlling in her own way. Vincent P. Mahler stands out among the supporting actors, who also include Craig Degel, Paul S. Holmquist, Christopher LaBove, Niall McGinty and Sean Sullivan.

Period-perfect details

As always, Brian Sidney Bembridge's set (lit by Keith Parham) is exemplary, with Alex Wren Meadows' handsome, period-perfect costumes and Andrew Hansen's original music adding great flair.

Nelson's greatest misstep in the play is his penning of a needlessly shrill and heavy-handed diatribe against American values, with Arnold being held up by Clinton as the quintessential American -- a man who would easily sell his soul for cash. It's a very cheap bit of sounding off in a play that otherwise has a fine sense of balance.

Not surprisingly, Nelson frames "The General From America" with an homage to the theater of the time -- a theater under threat of censorship by some colonists on the patriot side. Of course, the British also had a very active theatrical censor at work. In fact, the power of the Lord Chamberlain endured until 1968.