"Do facts mean anything to you?" asks a character identified only as the Man in Edward Albee's Occupant, the significantly ego-driven title of the playwright's two-hour endurance test at Signature Theatre Company. (Originally slated for that theatre in 2002, the production was canceled when star Anne Bancroft fell ill during previews.) The Man is talking to Louise Nevelson, the great sculptor who died in 1988 and is, presumably, being brought back to life for one final interview. But Albee is, of course, talking about himself as well, questioning once again the obsession with biographical facts that he finds get in the way of an artist's work. Surely he's had his share of what he might call prying into his background, some of which he dealt with in the brilliant Three Tall Women. Judging from Occupant, he's still angry and adamant, but this time he closes off the kind of dramatic conflict that made Women so effective, in favor of a biographical lecture torn from the pages of an encyclopedia article. Not until the final few minutes does this latest work discover some semblance of present-tense fascination.
Albee attempts to inject mystery or at least lead the audience by implying that not everything we hear may be true. Indeed, the most telling moments detail two pivotal events that may or may not have happened. One has to do with Nevelson's sighting a "huge black horse" at age 11. The other occurs four years later. "There was a neighbor who had a relative visiting — a boy," she recounts. "He was slender, and he already looked decadent, though he must have been my age. Blue eyes; he had blue eyes. And I remember looking in his eyes and seeing depths which I've never seen again." True? Not true? "Maybe true isn't what we're after," says the Man.
Albee being Albee, some of the writing still stings, and metaphors abound. The title itself refers to space an artist must occupy "if it kills you," to the nondescript "Occupant" on Nevelson's hospital door, and to her being within and one with her art. The point is that she is her art (as is Albee), that the two are inseparable.
Mercedes Ruehl is commanding as the tough, irascible, no-nonsense Nevelson. Striding about, batting her two-tiered sable eyelashes, dressed in costume designer Jane Greenwood's colorful layers, berating her interlocutor, Ruehl creates a woman as forceful as she is exotic. As the ill-defined Man, Larry Bryggman is patient but prodding, enthusiastic and ingratiating. Director Pam MacKinnon gets as much movement into the evening as possible. But this is stubborn material, and Nevelson's "Why do we have to go through all this?" sums it up.
Presented by and at Signature Theatre Company,
555 W. 42nd St., NYC.
June 5-July 13. Tue., 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., and Sun., 2 p.m. (No performance Fri., June 6, and Fri., July 4.)
(212) 244-7529 or www.signaturetheatre.org.
Casting by Telsey + Company.