In a limited Broadway run set to end on February 21st, three-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper has taken to the stage in a new revival of Bernard Pomerance’s Tony Award-winning play, The Elephant Man. Cooper plays John Merrick, a young man with extreme physical deformities trying to survive in Victorian London. Though the storyline is dark at times, its thought-provoking ideas of human kindness and Cooper’s excellent performance make it worth the hundred and fifty-dollars you spend on the ticket.
The play focuses on the later years of Merrick’s life, a time when he is rescued from being a human curiosity and placed under the care of Dr. Freddie Treeves (Alessandro Nivola) who works to understand Merrick’s unique deformities. He also aims to help him become a proper man of society. Treeves enlists the assistance of an actress named Ms. Kendall (Patricia Clarkson) to help Merrick learn how to lead a normal life, something he constantly struggles with understanding.
While many know Cooper for his work in The Hangover, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustler, what many do not know is that he was once a student here at the New School, and this is not his first time playing Merrick. Cooper attended the MFA Acting Program at the Actors Studio Drama School at the New School, a program which has since moved to Pace University. He originally took on the role of Merrick for his Master’s Thesis here in 2000.
Cooper has since played the role one more time, at the Williamstown Theater festival in 2012, and he seems to have mastered it. The role of John Merrick is both emotionally complex and physically demanding, requiring Cooper to walk with a limp and be hunched for almost all of the two-hour production. He must also keep his face twisted to one side, and somehow enunciate his many lines in a slight British accent, all of which he does with extraordinary ease. He takes on the role so fully that he is no longer one of America’s most famous movie stars, he is John Merrick.
“Elephant Man really shows what a professional actor Bradley Cooper is,” said Connor Hillman, 18, an aspiring actor and high school student at Clearwater Academy International in Florida. “From the beginning you get to watch him immerse himself in a role that few can relate to, and he is nothing but Merrick until the end. The play has a super talented cast that immerses themselves in Cooper’s role as well.”
While Cooper delivers a must-see performance, he is assisted by a great supporting cast including Alessandro Nivola who you may recognize from American Hustle or Selma, and Patricia Clarkson from Six Feet Under and Easy A fame. Nivola’s Treeves is another complex character looking to his work and faith for stability, while his relationship with Merrick tests just that. While Clarkson is able to bring in a subtle wit and charm to the production.
The play will make you too question what it means to live a normal life.
The Elephant Man is playing at the Booth Theater until February 21st.
Taylor is a journalism + design junior from Florida.
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