Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks

Review by Karen

With trembling and trepidation, I'm going to write a fan report about the play itself. It's relatively easy to tell stories about meeting Mark and getting his autograph; it's much harder to find words to describe the play itself and what Mark's performance was like. But there are several things I'd very much like to share with fans who couldn't be there, so I'm going to try.

First of all, if you've never seen Mark perform live, you wouldn't believe how much charisma he has on stage. Fans I was with in Miami (when he did the show with Rue McClanahan) and others in New York kept making the same comment: that as much as we all thought he was charismatic based on what we'd seen in movies, all of that is nothing compared to the way he comes across live. One fan in New York remarked that even Luke, who obviously made quite an indelible impression on a lot of us, doesn't have all of Mark's charisma, because it can't be conveyed through film. I hadn't thought about it in those words, but what she said accurately described my experience, and it fit with comments I heard from a lot of other fans: that as much as many of us (including me) love Luke, still, in terms of having charisma, emotional impact and a magnetic presence, Mark's performance of Michael Minetti far outshone Luke (which I think says something, considering that he was 25 years younger then, and though Luke may've been confined to celluloid and a so-so script, he still had the Force, perfect lighting and music by John Williams on his side *g*). I know that fans who live farther away have been saying, "We wish he'd do more movies so we could see them," but I have to tell you, just about everyone who's seen him live is saying, "Please let him do more stage roles!" Seriously, the fans who've seen him live tend to come away talking non-stop about how what he has to offer on stage is too good to be wasted on the flattening-out effects of film.

So what was so great about Mark's performance, other than the fact that he has such a magnetic stage presence? First of all, he's an incredibly gifted comedian, with wonderful comic timing and delivery. You can get a tiny taste of it by watching those video clips that are online. Throughout the first act, he's delivering hilariously over-the-top (and often bawdy) lectures about the history and meanings of different dances, accompanied by high-energy physical comedy. I'll never forget the way he danced downstage as he talked about the social milieu of World War II in which Swing dancing emerged ("Who needs rigid dance steps when you can be annihilated at any minute? Forget the cotillion and point me to the dance hall, horny GIs and loose women. Relax, let your hair down, and make public reference to your genitals as you jiggle on the dance floor."). In terms of pure comedy, the Foxtrot lesson may be the most hysterical; you can see a little snippet of it in the Broadway Beat clip. In that clip, Lily is expressing outrage at Michael's bawdy sense of humor, saying that his lewd take on things isn't the way she was raised in South Carolina. Michael tells Lily not to expect him to buy that innocent Southern belle routine, and says, "I can just see you out in the tobacco shed with your hoop skirt over your head!" It often looked as if Polly Bergen was seriously cracking up at that point, and Mark would try to pull her back by saying, "Foxtrot! Pay attention! Foxtrot!" as many times as necessary (regardless of how many were actually in the script). But sometimes Mark would crack up, too. One night it seemed like a feedback loop got going; a handful of people in the audience just kept cracking up (I was one of the guilty parties), and each time Mark would start giggling, too, until it seemed clear that he was directing his "Pay attention! Foxtrot!" remarks to himself as well, which only made some of us crack up all over again.

Nevertheless, what I found truly magical was not the many comic moments when Mark was doing his manic clowning (as I've written in my fan review, Michael seems to be a character who defends himself against connecting with people by clowning around, to the point that Lily can barely deal with him, at times), but the moments when Michael was responding to Lily and the moments when he was expressing greater vulnerability. Mark would register the impact of Lily's statements and actions so clearly, you could just about read Michael's mind and know exactly what he was thinking about everything she said (it's easier to switch to talking about "Michael" because that's how I experienced it). Those moments were just mesmerizing, because of the way that Michael's reactions gave you the sense that these two people were truly connected, affecting each other deeply. You got the feeling that Michael was responding in a very vulnerable way to whatever was happening, not acting, and that his emotions were just right there where you could see them -- not overdone, but very clear and real. Of course I'm focusing on Mark here, but the actresses he was working with (I've seen the play with three different actresses playing Lily) also did a good job of reacting to what he was doing; together they created moments when you could just see the way two people can affect each other, and you could feel the bond being created between them. Still, while I may be biased, I thought Mark did an especially good job of reacting to his co-star, responding to things in an open and convincing way.

To take just one example, there was one moment that always rocked me, during the Contemporary Dance lesson (Week 6). Michael and Lily have just shared some things about their lives and gotten much closer, and Michael is sitting on the floor, very relaxed, gathering up the footprints that he uses to teach the dances. Lily then lets it slip that even after all this, she's still thinking in terms of gay stereotypes: she asks if he has AIDS. You can feel the sense of betrayal, hurt and anger that comes over him as he takes that in, long before he speaks -- it seems to pervade his being, and as another viewer put it afterwards, you think, "Here it comes!" even before you hear the weary pain and slow-building anger in his voice. All of this comes through with wrenching clarity even though the scene is directed so that Michael is not facing the audience, he's visible only from the back and the side.

Then there were the moments when Michael was deeply empathizing with Lily, and Mark would put such emotion into his voice it would break your heart. I'll never forget the way he sounded genuinely torn up on lines like, "Oh, god, Lily -- I go through life like I'm the only person with nerve endings, and you've had so much pain!" It was also the way he would look at her, during the scenes when she was talking about her daughter. I saw him cry more than once during one of those speeches (for those who know the play, the one where they're sitting on the couch); during the other one (where he's sitting on the floor), he would look at her with an expression of such openness and caring, it was hauntingly beautiful, one of my favorite moments in the play. I found this slightly amazing, that Mark's reactions to things were so vivid and heartfelt that it was more fascinating to watch him than to watch the actress who was speaking, and actually more fascinating than watching the scenes where he was being funny (as hysterical as those were). The final scene of the play always reduced me to a puddle of tears; without giving away the ending, I can say that the two characters have just shared very tenderly and they're both deeply moved, and the way he would sound choked up as he asked her, "How about a little dance with me at sunset?" would just get me sobbing. I could see everyone around me going for the Kleenex as well; I remember one woman commenting, as we exited the theater, "I never cry during plays -- it's always my husband who cries. But this time they got me!"

Even after all this verbiage, I've barely scraped the surface, describing a couple of moments here and there (and I haven't even mentioned how each performance was a little different from every other, which was also part of the thrill). The play was two hours of pure magic -- hysterical and heartbreaking. The plot wasn't the most complex in the world, and there were a few transitional lines of dialogue that were a bit contrived and not all that impressive, but there were more than enough sparkling lines and moments that one could easily overlook the imperfections in the script. I haven't even mentioned the beautiful window in the background that would change colors to show the ocean at different times of day, including a breathtaking sunset -- I know, fans who want to read about Mark Hamill don't care about a window *g*, but it was part of the magic of the whole experience, so I have to mention it (look at the pictures in the play gallery, some of them show it, though not the dramatic sunset which was only visible during the Bonus Lesson).

The last thing I want to say is that I was utterly blown away by the ability Mark has to let the audience into the heart of a character and to move people emotionally. That's the one thing that took my breath away and that I'll never forget from either the Florida or the New York performances. It seems as if, over the years, he's gotten a number of film roles where he gets a chance to be entertaining, but not to express a range of emotion or to sweep the audience away emotionally. Given that history, I don't know whether people generally think of Mark as having a gift for letting you see into the heart of a character (though I noticed the director, Alan Seidelman, commented on it, in that clip on Broadway Beat), but he truly does. I hope that he'll someday play other roles that will let the audience experience his ability to express the heart and soul of a character. I feel very lucky that I got to see Six Dance Lessons as many times as I did, and I hope that eventually more people will get a chance to appreciate what he has to offer.

* p.s. Lest anyone wonder whether it's just the thrill of seeing Mark Hamill in person that sets a fan's heart aflutter and deludes her into thinking he has an amazing stage presence, let me mention that I didn't get anything like the same rush from seeing him after the show, signing autographs and all that. Don't get me wrong -- he's nice, he's charming, he's very animated and gracious to his fans, but it's not even remotely the same thrill. When he's on stage, the energy and emotional presence he brings to the performance is pure magic. So no, it's not just the rush of "Oh my god, that's Mark Hamill!" In fact, I'm quite certain that that particular rush had worn off completely by the 12th time I saw the play -- several performances before that point, in fact *g* -- and yet every performance was an absolute, mesmerizing delight.
New York, November 2003

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