Theater review | ‘Elephant Man’s’ lead role conveys deformity through self-contortion

Michael Todd
Staff Writer

“The Elephant Man,” which opened this past Friday at the Singleton Center, follows the life of frighteningly deformed John Merrick and his rise from the dregs of life as an attraction in a freak show all the way to the upper class of 1880s Victorian society.

The first time the audience sees John Merrick (portrayed by Austin Seay) without a cloak obscuring his crooked form or a veil masking his mutated face, he stands with his spine erect, feet firmly planted and arms away from him, mirroring the image projected on screens above him of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” supposedly the ideal human figure.

With the exception of a little stage makeup, Seay wears no prosthetics to manifest the horrors of his appearance as described and reacted to throughout the play. It is only as his deformities are described by Treves (portrayed by Matt Johnson) that Seay begins to embody the disfigured man.

Through the contortion of his body and the obvious effort behind every movement, as well as through his facial expressions and, later, the use of his voice, Seay brings life to his character’s deformities.

The body, Seay said, was one of the greatest challenges in communicating Merrick’s character, especially considering all the additional verbal acting he had to do on top of the imitation of bodily disfigurement.

“We found the body really early,” Seay said. “Roughly two days into rehearsal, we had an idea of what it was going to be.”

Seay participated in a type of method acting to help him grow accustomed to and maintain the contortion of his body for the full two-hour duration of the performance.

“For a week and a half, I wore roughly 20 pounds of weights on the left side of my body – 10 pounds on my hand, 12 pounds around my ankle,” Seay said of the effort to truly understand the right side of Merrick’s body and what it would have been like to have been him. “If you (compare) pictures of John Merrick and I … there are certain scenes where my body is contorted exactly as his (was), at least as much as possible.”

Consequently, the actor says he stretches out for 30 minutes each night.

“I’ll probably need a chiropractor after all this is done,” he said.

In the beginning of the show, Merrick is abandoned by Ross, portrayed by Bryan Hall, his previous caretaker and the keeper of all his earnings as a street attraction. Treves provides Merrick with a sanctuary at a London hospital after a crowd of pedestrians, horrified by Merrick’s looks, threatens to tear him apart.

In an attempt to socialize Merrick and introduce him into “respectable” society, Treves turns to actress Mrs. Kindal (portrayed by Liz Earnest) who puts her stage skills to the test in establishing a friendship with Merrick and later introducing him further into the society in which she plays a prominent role. It is not long, however, before this fabricated friendship takes on a depth and sincerity that promises to shock audience members as much as it surprises all characters involved.

One of the aims of each character, according to Hall, has been to simplify points and actions in the play to show power.

“How much more powerful can it be with just a gesture?” Hall said. “There’s one handshake (between Kindle and John), and it’s just a handshake, but it’s so much more powerful than that.”

Once Merrick finds himself surrounded by a more civilized society than he is accustomed to, he is discovered to not be a monster. Instead, he is a sensitive, intelligent and surprisingly spiritual man who makes his best effort not to be inconvenienced by, or to inconvenience others with, his condition. As the play progresses, however, both Treves and Merrick are brought to question ideas of humanity through their interactions with each other and through society’s interactions with Merrick.

One of the famous lines of the play, which paraphrases the Bible, is spoken by Merrick, asking, “If your mercy is so cruel, what do you have for justice?”

“I think John Merrick sees himself as this type of Job figure,” Seay said of his character, referencing a book in the Bible with which Merrick struggles to understand, “where his life is this one test, but he’s going to stay faithful and, because of that, he will still be rewarded in the end. His life is just this trial.”

If audience members observe closely, they’ll notice that the costumes of the performers, in accordance to costume designer Isabela Tavares’ main design concept, progress from darker tones to lighter tones as the play advances. This follows Merrick’s rise in society from a creature at the beginning of the play to an enlightened person by the end.

“You see Merrick arise to the aristocracy,” Seay said of his character’s journeys, both physical and internal. “As he becomes more taken in by society, he becomes more ‘normal,’ which really means more disgusting (and) defunct. … He was actually more human before.”

In this way, “The Elephant Man” challenges the ideas of normalcy and, overall, what it really means to be human. However, audience and cast members alike are left to question who had the hardest time with his respective journey and who left the show more enlightened by the time the stage lights dim.

“At the beginning of the play, (Treves) is bright eyed and bushy tailed,” Johnson said of his character. “Through his relationship with John, he comes to question what he believes in.”

The multi-terraced stage, constructed by students, served as a variety of settings ranging from the London streets to the hospital that would become Merrick’s first real home. With quick recoveries following the sparsely noticeable mistakes, the cast delivered a masterful performance with an obvious understanding of their respective characters that took the audience from goose bumps to, in some cases, tears.

“Anybody who comes to see this show will leave with a whole new found respect for each other,” said Alex Ireys, who played Lord John. “Because that’s really what we’re looking at – how we treat each other. (It’s about) how cruel humanity can be, even when we’re showing empathy.”