Between East and West
These dilemmas are particularly acute for the characters in Richard Nelson’s Between East and West. Dissident Czech playwright-filmmaker Gregor Hasek and his wife Erna, an actress, are forced to flee their country in 1983 and embark upon an uncertain future in New York, where they discover a culture that has little use for their talents. There are no Hollywood directing gigs for Gregor, and to get a shot at directing Three Sisters for the Hartford Stage, he must toady to an artistic director half his age with a quarter of his intellect and an eighth of his experience. When he finally gets his first directing job, the critics respond with a two-word kiss of death: “Too European.” Matters are even worse for Erna, whose poor command of English makes her afraid to answer the phone and talk even to telemarketers; pursuing her acting career is out of the question. That their marriage will disintegrate is a foregone conclusion.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Worse, Finlayson seems to miss the gravity and singularity of the characters’ predicament. He spends three of four paragraphs in his notes discussing the difficulties he faced starting over when he moved from Chicago to Arizona and then to Saint Louis. Though he allows that his struggles pale in comparison to Gregor and Erna’s, it seems absurdly solipsistic to draw a parallel between being forced on the one hand to forfeit one’s art, heritage, language, and culture and, on the other, adjusting to a new job and living situation in a different U.S. city. That trivialization might help explain why, in Next’s production, Gregor and Erna’s conflicts often seem no more than petty squabbling.
