A Reserve So Deep, You Could Drown
Ben BrantleyNovember 16, 2014: Hugh Jackman isn’t giving anything away these days. And reticence, it turns out, becomes him. Who knew? In Jez Butterworth’s The River, the poetic tease of a drama that opened Sunday night at the Circle in the Square Theater, Mr. Jackman conveys an impression of mightily self-contained silence, even when he’s talking like Wordsworth on a bender. And in banking his fires so compellingly, he ascends with assurance to a new level as a stage actor. I make no comparable claims for Mr. Butterworth’s short and elliptical play, previously staged in London at the Royal Court Theater and his first since the mighty “Jerusalem” K.O.’d New York in 2011. That heaving portrait of a belief-starved Britain was an audacious symphony of words, ideas and characters you hated to love. The River is conducted in a more minor key, and is also a more minor effort. Like “Jerusalem,” this cryptic tale of a man and a woman (or women — maybe) magnifies the seemingly ordinary to mythic proportions, while honorably refusing to stoop to easy explanations. The director Ian Rickson, who brought such clarity and vitality to “Jerusalem,” lends the same care and polish to the far more shadowy River. This artfully staged production, set in a rural fishing cabin that is one man’s insular kingdom, is guaranteed to hold your attention. But you’re likely to leave it feeling hungry, and not just because it aims to mystify. Be grateful, then, that any pangs of emptiness are counterbalanced by the intriguing heft of Mr. Jackman’s strangely radiant opacity.
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