Terrence McNally’s ‘Fire and Air’ @ Uptown Players
Photos by Mike Morgan Photography
—Martha Heimberg
“Never fall in love with a dancer,” says Sergei to his loving nurse Dunya (verrsatile Lisa Fairchild in strong and loyal old-servant mode), bemoaning that dancers love only themselves.
This textbook narcissist needs to take a good look at himself in one of the huge mirrors central to Donna Marquet’s spare, elegant set for Uptown Players’ production of Fire and Air. It’s the regional premiere of the late (and Texas-raised) Terrence McNally’s fact-based drama about famed dance impresario Sergei Diaghilev (Patrick Bynane) of the Ballets Russes, and his complex love affair with his protégé Vaslav Nijinsky (Dominic Pecikonis)—who became the stuff of dance legend.
Top-notch Cheryl Denson directs this revealing drama (staged in the Wyly Theatre’s sixth-floor studio space) with the empathy of a conductor modulating the noisy passion and intimate lyrical motifs of a romantic concerto. Indeed, the self-adoring Romantic Diaghilev grabs gifted, beautiful young men from the street or smaller ballet companies, takes them into his bed and his studio, and tells them they are “Apollo” or “a god” until they believe they can fly—at least for a few moments on opening nights in Venice or Paris, or wherever the troupe has landed.
Sergei (moving over time from romantic to modernist dance works) sees himself as a kind of godlike creative force. In McNally’s depiction of his consuming dedication to the art of dance, he creates physically and mentally strenuous routines for his chosen dancers, then convinces himself that he’s also “created” the dancer. In middle age, Diaghilev still cries out to his childhood nurse that he’s about to die when he has another outbreak of boils on his chest—and totally loses it when Nijinsky, now too famous to need him, takes off on his own. Diaghilev mutters furiously, “I told I would cut him into little pieces,” for such a betrayal. Yet this self-styled star-maker swears that suffering the miseries of managing a dance company and pulling the best from its dancers is a personal sacrifice made in the name of art.
That’s the crux of the play: Is Diaghilev a selfish monster using innocent boys to satisfy his erotic desires? A pillowed bed rolls on and off the stage to make it clear that it’s not all barres and mirrors going on here. Is he aware he’s trying to justify his acts by constantly saying how much he suffers to create art? Or does he truly believe that, as he says toward the end, “I am a man who tried to create beauty every night, and now I’m a hideous beast,” referring to a recurrence of chest sores. Bynane’s forceful Diaghilev eloquently delivers his get-with-me-and-get-famous seductive speech to a protégé, as well as an all-out tantrum or a mad Cossack dance when his construct of the world is threatened.
Pecikonis is a poised, perfectly formed Nijinsky, always gorgeously posed whether standing or sitting on the floor. We see his own ego growing as he begins to respond to the noisy acclaim of adoring audiences. He dreams of dancing naked as a faun. His droll smile becomes sad and pouty when he feels his mentor’s control tightening, but he grins and jokes about their sexual relationship as well.
Both master and student enact one version of artistic passion in a scene in which Sergei carefully removes tights and top from his straight-faced creation, who walks away leaving the “creator” spread on top of the stripped costume, as if the dancer was still inside. The actual dancing in the show is limited to rousing outbursts of Cossack kicks and stomps, and position-taking at the barre, all smartly choreographed by Carrie Ruth Trumbo to suggest the preparation for an upcoming opening.
Thanks to Denson’s canny direction, the two-and-one-half-hour play moves swiftly between 1906 and Diaghilev’s death in 1929, with shifts in time and place smoothly evoked through dialogue. The neurotically busy, always-broke producer blithely talks his way out of hotels and regularly fails to meet company payrolls. “You’re spending more money than you’re bringing in,” says his devoted cousin and former lover Dmitry Filosofov (Aaron Cash), who joins him abroad to keep the books, as their Russian homeland veers toward the Communist revolution.
Despite being rejected by Sergei, who prefers teenage boys, Cash’s handsome and loyal “Dima” loves his dear friend deeply, and stands beside him through all the fantasy and fury. In one touching scene he offers an alternative to heartbreak. “What we had together as young men, I think we could have it again,” he says. Dimi’s words are ignored. As usual, Sergei is getting himself together by launching a new season and seeking another young dancer.
They all continue to love the buoyant, optimistic Sergei, and put up with the self-centered, bratty version of the man, who takes their love and money for granted. Marianne Galloway is a striking female force as Misia Sert, the woman who’s loved him all her life, and who “every man in Paris wants to sleep with, except one,” as Sergei tells her, giving her his best that’s-fate smile. With her hoarse mezzo voice, sexy Russian accent, and grand turn-of-the-century outfits by costume designer Suzi Cranford, Galloway’s Misia tells the object of her own desire how much she envies his homosexual pleasures. Then she takes his advice, marries a rich man, and finances his next ballet in her eagerness to “spend all my husband’s money” on Sergei’s grandiose productions.
Everybody looks handsome in fancy afternoon attire when the scene shifts to a Venetian beach, with white linen draped over lounge chairs. The men wear straw fedoras and Misia glows in a stunning vanilla dress. Nijinsky runs through almost naked, while Dima admires the beautiful boys in the water. Joshua Nguyen’s subtle sound design and Kyle Harris’ dramatic lighting design make such scene shifts instantly convincing.
Exquisite Danny Vanegas as dancer Leonide Massine, Act II’s young “god,” turns out to be willing but feisty in his dual role as protégé and bedfellow. He tells his master what a snob he’s become, and holds his own in a bizarre scene with Vaslav, as they argue about who is the true “next Nijinsky.”
The vexing question at the center of the play, however, is whether “Seryozha,” as his circle of friends call him, is truly deluded in thinking he everything’s fine because he has sacrificed his life for art. Is that true—or is he simply a charismatic salesman using his skills to exploit young men? Perhaps he is both. Denson’s cast and crew pose the question with flair and style; the ambiguous answer is for audiences to determine.
WHEN: March 7-17, 2024
WHERE: Wyly Theatre (6th Floor Studio), Dallas Arts District
WEB: uptownplayers.org
