Bryan Cranston slips into his characters skin-first. As Walter White in “Breaking Dangerous,” he by no means misplaced contact with the ravaged well being that was driving this married chemistry trainer into acts of legal desperation.
In his Tony Award-winning efficiency as Lyndon B. Johnson in “All of the Means,” Cranston introduced the president’s vote-wrangling energy to life with a Texas drawl, cocky slouch and inexhaustible lung energy. As Howard Beale within the stage model of “Community,” he gained one other Tony for delivering an on-air nervous breakdown that was so visceral it’s wonderful nobody within the viewers known as 911.
Taking part in Charles Nichols in Paul Grellong’s “Energy of Sail,” which opened Thursday on the Geffen Playhouse, Cranston embodies the weary petulance of a grizzled Harvard historical past professor whose star is in decline. In registering the character’s contempt at anybody who would query his progressive bona fides, he takes on the character’s niggling aches and ache.
Whereas ready for a delayed Amtrak with one in all his graduate college students, he massages a nasty knee — an arthritic reminder that point stops for nobody. These little bodily particulars, incidental but evocative, create a portrait that’s able to distilling a whole persona within the neat trim of a tutorial’s beard.
Sadly, whereas Cranston is portray in oils, his playwright is diagramming in stick figures. “Energy of Sail,” a debate play on the recent subjects of free speech and tutorial freedom, is one thing a cable information community seeking to get into scripted tv drama would possibly dream up.
The manufacturing, below the route of Weyni Mengesha, wastes an enviable forged (that features Amy Brenneman) on a play that’s half place paper, half political thriller. Rachel Myers’ set conjures an Ivy League dream of book-lined cabinets and Gothic archways, however the dramatic world is constructed on shadows.
Charles, a free-speech absolutist whose politics are extra aligned with Rachel Maddow than with Tucker Carlson, has invited to campus a 31-year-old Nazi sympathizer and Holocaust denier named Carver. College students are loudly protesting on campus, however Charles refuses to again down.
He sees the symposium as a press release. Universities shouldn’t be within the enterprise of coddling. Extremists should be uncovered, and Charles guarantees a “full dismantling.”
Amy (Brenneman), his frightened dean in full harm management mode, reminds him that Carter “cozies as much as Klansmen.” She exhibits Charles the Boston Globe op-ed that calls him a neo-Nazi “apologist” and strongly urges him rethink giving a prestigious platform to a purveyor of hate.
However as Charles unbudgingly argues, “the reply to hate speech is extra speech.” He recurrently whips out this slogan every time he wants a protect — an indication that his motivation will not be as easy because it appears.
Having planted this clue, Grellong could be anticipated to probe deeply into Charles’ character. As a substitute, he ushers in different factors of view whereas establishing a tangled internet of intrigue.
The opposite characters are all pawns in an argument offered from totally different angles. Complexity is the objective, however the drama is just too manipulative to be enlightening.
Baxter (Brandon Scott), a Black historian who was groomed by Charles and has now surpassed him in cultural prominence, exhibits up unannounced to attempt to cease him from sabotaging his repute. He argues not solely from the standpoint of friendship but additionally from the broader precept that not everybody deserves a spot at “the desk the place the grown-ups are speaking.”
Lucas (Seth Numrich) and Maggie (Tedra Millan), two grad college students vying for a similar Harvard fellowship that launched Baxter’s profession, are aligned in wanting to assist their professor out of this mess. Coming from reverse ends of the political spectrum, nonetheless, they've totally different agendas.
Maggie needs Charles to attend a “protected area meet” with outraged college students who've drawn her sympathy. Lucas, who makes throwaway remarks about being a “cis white male” at an elite establishment, is cagier — and extra in management than his skittish demeanor lets on.
Charles invitations these college students to accompany him to a planning dinner with Carver at his white nationalist compound. However solely Lucas, who’s all the time seeking to exploit a possibility for development, agrees to hitch him on a go to that can have stunning penalties.
“Energy of Sail” strikes backward in time to account for the way occasions disastrously conspired. The characters, on the service of an more and more convoluted plot, should hold on for pricey life. Not everybody makes it.
Even with all her veteran wiles, Brenneman can’t make Amy, a tutorial institutionalist who acts extra like a public relations govt, plausible. When she swats a stack of books onto the ground in a standoff with Maggie, who has improbably determined to take justice into her personal arms, it’s as if her character has been demoted to melodrama.
Scott’s Baxter is supposed to be the rationalist in a sea of frothing fanatics, however he comes off as a cipher. Implausibly popping up on the behest of the playwright, he has a post-crisis confrontation with a drunk and determined Charles that solely exposes the dramatic vacancy of their relationship.
Two different characters contribute to the distraction. Donna Simone Johnson performs an FBI agent whose pauses are all pregnant and whose nods are persistently realizing. And in probably the most thankless position, Hugh Armstrong is granted an aimless scene as a bartender whose predominant attribute is telling the world’s most feeble jokes.
The logistics of the uncovered plot are as strained because the psychological clarification of Charles’ habits. Apparently, he’s dying of envy of colleagues who've change into MSNBC regulars.
Educational jealousy shouldn't be one thing that ought to ever be underestimated. However it is a TV author’s thought of a premier college. Grellong, who has written for “Hawaii 5-O” and “Regulation & Order: Particular Victims Unit,” manufactures a caricature of Harvard by which all anybody appears to care about is getting on “The Rachel Maddow Present.”
Essentially the most fascinating character — which isn’t to say probably the most credible — is Lucas, whose unlikely analysis (a working gag) is on the “agrarian financial system and practices of seventeenth century Sweden.” It’s not his scholarship however his right-wing lengthy sport that reenergizes this sluggish play.
Numrich is a superb actor, so I want the position would have higher packaged his deviousness. The scene on the practice platform, by which Lucas slyly entices Charles to bask in some white satisfaction, is disturbingly recent. However all subtlety is misplaced when this J.D. Vance knockoff takes off his masks.
It goes with out saying that Cranston fleshes out each second of stage time with fact. However why he’d accept “Energy of Sail” is a thriller. (The baffling title, derived from nautical legislation, is deterrent sufficient.) The stage ought to supply Cranston a possibility to stretch his performing muscle groups. This play leaves him excessive and dry.
'Energy of Sail'
The place: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Los Angeles
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 3 and eight p.m. Saturdays, 2 and seven p.m. Sundays. Ends March 20.
Tickets: $39-$149
Data: (310) 208-2028 or geffenplayhouse.org
Working time: 1 hour, 45 minutes (no intermission)
COVID protocol: Proof of full vaccination is required. Masks are required always.
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