Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times says A Big Blue Nail is "A fascinating play"... - read full review

Man vs. mountain saga soars with imagination, acting

February 6, 2008 BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic When Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand-bred mountaineer celebrated as the first man to scale Mt. Everest, died last month, all the obituaries dutifully noted that he made the 1953 ascent with his Nepalese Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, and that the two shared credit for the achievement. But you really do have to ask yourself: Which man is the more famous and who is thought of as "the first" when the exploit is mentioned?

The Hillary-Norgay team came to mind Tuesday as I watched Victory Gardens Theater's hugely ambitious world premiere of Carlyle Brown's "A Big Blue Nail." Brown's fever dream (or, more aptly, "cryogenic nightmare") of a play conjures the 1909 expedition to the North Pole by explorer Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, his unheralded African-American guide. » Click to enlarge image Larry Neumann Jr. (Commador Peary) is carried by Anthony Fleming III (Matthen Henson) in "A Big Blue Nail" at Victory Gardens.

A fascinating play -- in need of some judicious trimming, but conjured with grand imagination by director-designer Loy Arcenas and featuring a slew of galvanic performances -- it not only serves to clarify matters of history and race, but also forces you to think about the mix of obsession, drive and near-superhuman endurance in both men, and about the essentially abstract notion of "the top of the world."

It begins 10 years after the successful expedition. The exhausted, ailing, guilt-ridden Peary (gaunt, haunted-eyed Larry Neumann Jr. in one of those towering performances he delivers on a regular basis) has asked Henson (the smart, dynamic, expertly mercurial Anthony Fleming III) to come to his grand house on the Maine coast, where he lives with his wife (a searing Laura J. Fisher).

Clearly there has been a rift between the two men. And while Peary wants Henson's blessing, Henson, stuck in a clerk's job, wants his full due. The men's epic confrontation is played brilliantly by Neumann and Fleming.

Moving in and out of a hallucinatory state, Peary recounts the men's initial meeting, when he hired the gifted Henson as his valet. He then recounts the grueling voyage itself. Peary, motored by ambition (in the guise of the allegorical figure of the Future, shrewdly played by a briefly nude Bethanny Alexander), is kept alive by Henson, who amputates his frozen, gangrenous toes and carries him on his back, while skillfully managing a quartet of Inuit dog-sled drivers. Joseph Anthony Foronda is the Inuits' mischievous leader, with Esteban Andres Cruz, Remigo Ortiz and Narciso Lobo and Scott Baity Jr. completing the deft ensemble in this harrowing, ingenious saga.

hweiss@suntimes.com

'A BIG BLUE NAIL' RECOMMENDED When: Through March 2 Where: Victory Gardens at the Biograph, 2243 N. Lincoln Tickets: $20-$45 Phone: (773) 871-3000