Time and the Conways
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Cititour.com Review
You have to admire Elizabeth McGovern for not fearing typecasting. In the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Time and the Conways she’s once again playing the matriarch of an upper-crust English family in the early part of the 20th century. But Downton Abbey this ain’t, and fortune isn’t as kind to the Conway siblings and their widowed mother in the decades after World War I as it was to the Crawleys on PBS’s crazy popular British serial. Plus, there were no metaphysical elements in the latter. But while J.B. Priestley’s 1937 play is no great masterpiece waiting to be rediscovered, Rebecca Taichman’s curiously affecting production draws out its power thanks to a sterling ensemble.
In the first act, set in 1919, Mrs. Conway and her six children are filled with post–World War I optimism as they celebrate the 21st birthday of daughter Kay (Charlotte Parry), who longs to be a writer. Amid the festivities, son Robin (Matthew James Thomas) arrives home from the military and woos Joan (Cara Ricketts), whom brother Alan (Gabriel Ebert) also has feelings for. Sister Hazel (Anna Camp) is stuck with an admirer she detests in Ernest (Steven Boyer), an ambitious businessman eager to climb the social ladder. Socialist Madge (Brooke Bloom), meanwhile, has her eyes on family solicitor Gerald (Alfredo Narciso), while youngest sibling Carol (Anna Baryshnikov) is awash in youthful vigor.
Life is not so splendid in Act II, set in 1937, as the family reunites at the house, now inhabited only by Alan and Mrs. Conway. The bliss of 18 years ago has been defeated by the political and economic woes of the succeeding decades, and by the sorrow life has brought. The Conways quarrel endlessly as they try to find a way to hold on to the family home. Here’s where things turn weird. As Kay mourns the loss of their younger, happier selves, Alan consoles her by quoting Blake and suggesting that she not look at time in a linear way: Who they are now is just a part of who they actually are — and that realizing this, he encourages, will help her endure.
It’s oddly comforting thinking of the world in that way in the present-day U.S., as it must have been for British audiences in the 1930s. That conversation sets up the final act, which returns the Conways to 1919 and Kay’s joyous birthday festivities. We watch their interactions shaded by the knowledge of what becomes of them, and Alan and Kay now seem to possess a sense of clairvoyance. Time and the Conways doesn’t entirely fulfill its potential, but it’s still a stirring family drama, made all the more poignant by an excellent cast, led by McGovern, who convey life’s joys and pains with aplomb.
By Diane Snyder
Visit the Site
http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/Shows-Events/Time-and-the-Conways.aspx
Cast
Elizabeth McGovern, Steven Boyer, Anna Camp, Gabriel Ebert, Charlotte Parry, Matthew James Thomas, Anna Baryshnikov, Brooke Bloom, Alfredo Narciso, Cara Ricketts
Open/Close Dates
Opening 10/10/2017
Closing 11/26/2017
Preview Open/ Preview Close Dates
Preview Opening 9/14/2017
Closing Open-ended
Box Office
212-719-1300
Theatre Info
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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