The Collector (02/10)
The story’s narrative alternates between Frederick, a lonely, lower class clerk and butterfly collector, and his luminous, posh young art student captive, upper-class Miranda.
The Collector catapulted to lifelong fame previously unknown writer, John Fowles’ in 1963. The film earned a gaggle of awards, from six Oscar nominations to a Golden Globe going to Eggar and director, William Wyler. Eggar earned best actress, Stamp earned best actor at the Cannes Film Festival, which also gave a nod and nomination to director Wyler.
Though 40 years have flown by since the vibrant, Bond girl-gorgeous redhead, Samantha Egger, and Terence Stamp, then considered one of the 100 sexiest men alive, starred in the lush, gripping screen version of John Fowles’ novel despite the fact that the action was confined to one room.
In The Collector, Fowles literally snagged the British upper class under a microscope in a single room, just as the class system itself was wriggling to its own demise. British obsession with rigid and ingrained class that pre-determined a person’s life permeated everything cultural at the time, spawning just before Fowles novel, the veritable “angry young men” of British theatre.
Thus lower class former clerk Frederick (updated here as a lottery winner) has to emotionally win over his upper class captive and make her fall in love with him even though he has the upper hand, so to speak, and it is ready to strike at any time. His earnest ignorance and illusionary romantic love matches Miranda’s own adolescent illusions and overblown rhetoric though she insists it not class that makes a difference but his ignorant ways and outlook.
It is imperative that The Collector convince the audience that merely her upbringing and bearing could give upper class captive Miranda such psychological power over her lower class captor despite the fact that he now has more money than her family and is willing to share it with her. And it is equally imperative that we understand and pull for
It could be the casting. In the film (and play), Miranda’s shiny dollar upbringing is apparent in her looks and demeanor, and sets the tone. You are pulling for this gorgeous outdoorsy girl to make an escape. At the same time, Terence Stamp is irresistible, so intensely sincere (and animal beautiful), that he cannot help but evoke pity and a bizarre kind of empathy for his futile attempts at emotional seduction.
Here, Miranda (Jaimie Page) is hardly the lustrous girl, given to the dullest possible mousy hair and clothes any art student would burn, a runny red nose, and such a shrill voice much of the time that it is impossible not to wish her even farther below the servant cellar. At the same time, the only thing that changes with a one-note Dane Zinter as the spineless
Set designer Edward Edwards proves how inept Fredrick is at decorating and the 4 am lighting makes watching the play makes the audience feel like being trapped in a basement for two months instead of two hours. In director Edward’s hands, the characters begin and end on the same note. There is no apparent evolution of the characters, though we know Miranda has changed from her diary, Fredrick from his actions.
Representative of the lack of tension in the action is the physical fight between the two. Once Miranda has earned the right to eat upstairs, she finds a way to clobber Fredrick over the head. Instead of an ensuing struggle, she then stands and waits for him to get up and clobber her back.
I wanted so much to love this play, and, in all fairness, other audience members enjoyed it, saying they would recommend it to others. But the Ruskin Group Theatre usually offers such fine presentations, that perhaps one answer could be to go back and review the novel, play and film. Sometimes it’s best not to tamper with a winner.
The Collector plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm through March 6, 2010.
The Ruskin Group Theatre Company is conveniently located at
www.ruskingrouptheatre.com