Risky Business
18 October 2006

One man, two wives, and their messy lives on an intimate stage

Unlawfully Wedded: Lyman Felt (Victor Talmadge) and his
spouses, Theodora (Karen Grassle, left) and Leah (Nancy Carlin).

Plays can be dangerous, but I've always considered the buildings in which they're performed to be relatively safe places to spend a few hours. At least, that was true until a couple of weeks ago, when I read about the Russian Ministry of Culture's new plan to introduce insurance policies to protect theatergoers against the possibility of terrorist attack or other "unfortunate occurrences" that might disrupt a live performance. A delayed response to the October 2002 hostage crisis in which 129 audience members were killed after Chechen militants seized a Moscow theater, the Russians' novel insurance scheme initially struck me as bizarre, if not flagrantly opportunistic: The 2002 crisis was devastating, but this kind of thing rarely happens at the theater. It's not for nothing that most people who purchased a policy in the program's pilot phase did so, according to a local newspaper, in order to insure themselves against being stood up by their dates — an "unfortunate occurrence" unsurprisingly not covered by the plan.

Thanks to San Francisco Playhouse's rambunctious production of Arthur Miller's equally wild The Ride Down Mount Morgan, however, the Russians' heightened sense of indemnity doesn't seem so strange to me anymore. In a world dominated by news headlines about terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, and global warmingÐinduced natural catastrophes, risk management has never been such a hot topic. And yet the very act of hedging against the possibility of something going awry during a performance is absurd. We buy into insurance out of fear of loss, and yet the fattest, most regularly paid premiums in the world can neither stop death and destruction from occurring nor truly make up for the losses incurred. "Insurance is basically comical, isn't it? At least pathetic," says Lyman Felt, the wealthy fiftysomething executive at the center of Miller's play. "You're buying immortality, aren't you? Reaching up out of the grave to pay the bills, remind people of your love? It's poetry. The soul was once immortal; now we've got an insurance policy."

Felt ought to know: A former poet who made his fortune in the insurance business, the character preaches prudence while performing metaphorical bungee jumps. Felt's life embodies one of the knottiest contradictions of our self-centered, "have our cake and eat it, too" times — how to pursue one's desires and ambitions to the max without forfeiting one's lifestyle, let alone one's life. Viewing the system as "one enormous tit" to be sucked on, Felt takes the idea of "suckcess" to the socially and morally dubious extreme of being married to two women at once. As enamored of his existence in Manhattan with his upright, nurturing wife of 32 years, Theodora, as he is of his life with spouse No. 2, the sexy, independent Leah in upstate New York, Felt merrily sustains a madcap commute between his two unknowing spouses and children for nine years, before a near-lethal car accident on an icy mountain pass interrupts his blissful routine and packs him off to a nearby hospital's Intensive Care Unit.

Felt's method of risk management is as unorthodox as his domestic situation, revolving, at the most basic level, around his own winning personality and the devotion he inspires in those around him. It's hard not to fall in love with Victor Talmadge's portrayal of Felt in director Joy Carlin's production. Endowed with youthful energy, articulate charm, and checkmark-shaped cheekbones every bit as pronounced as Johnny Depp's, Talmadge (like Patrick Stewart, who played the role on Broadway a few years ago) turns Felt into a thoroughly likeable bigamist. Bounding about in his hospital pajamas, Talmadge exudes boyish confidence and genuine passion even as his angry spouses assault him. As much as he hurts Theodora and Leah, a deep empathy flows between the women and their disgraced husband. You can sense it in the paralyzed emotion on Karen Grassle's face as her Theodora learns the news about Felt's double existence; it's also there in Nancy Carlin's uncluttered delivery as Leah, describing her wayward spouse as "such a splendidly hungry man."

At another level, Felt deals with the danger of living life on the edge by channeling his suppressed guilt and self-loathing into an extreme game against fate. In a series of dreamlike flashbacks — during which we see Felt leaping out of his hospital bed like someone who's just found out he's won the lottery (rather than cracked several ribs, totaled a Porsche, and estranged two wives) — the character justifies his extravagant life choices by testing how far he can push his luck. In one scene, for instance, we watch him book a hotel room for himself and Leah just blocks away from the well-appointed Manhattan home he shares with his other wife. (Watching Grassle's unsuspecting Theodora calmly reading only feet away from Talmadge and Carlin on the diminutive stage heightens the threat of discovery.)

In another scene — the most absurdly theatrical of the play — Felt faces off against a lion while on safari in Africa with Theodora and their daughter. Ranting in defense of his bigamy as his wife and child cower out of earshot in the distance, Felt dares the beast to devour him before returning in triumph to the car. There's something almost biblical about Felt's hubris in these moments; in cheating death, he hopes to win a little piece of immortality, like Daniel in the lion's den or Jonah in the whale. Yet the "premiums" the character pays to insure himself against the loss of his precious, double-wifed lifestyle are much too high, and the payout much too small. It's ironic that Felt finds the insurance industry "basically comical" only to end up the butt of some cosmic risk-management joke.

Miller wrote Mount Morgan in 1991 as a response to the selfishness and greed of the Reagan years. When a revised version of the play opened in New York in 1998, critics saw it as something of a parable in the wake of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal. Experiencing Mount Morgan under Bush foregrounds yet another, even more disturbing, side of Miller's moral mantrap of a comedy: The current administration's Feltlike desire to "have it all" has led to the reckless behavior that has spawned a widespread climate of fear. The more this country flirts with disaster, the saner the idea of insurance for theatergoers begins to sound. Why stop there? Bring on bigamy insurance, too.

The Ride Down Mount Morgan

Directed By:Joy Carlin
Starring:Victor Talmadge, Nancy Carlin, and Karen Grassle
Where:San Francisco Playhouse, 533 Sutter (between Powell and Mason), S.F
Written By:Arthur Miller