The Hollywood actor shows theatrical prowess but he's let down by a sluggish production, says Ben Lawrence

Bradley Cooper is not a generous actor. His leading roles in films such as Silver Linings Playbook and American Sniper scream "me, me, me" and you can almost smell the testosterone as he sets about hogging the limelight. So his performance as Joseph Merrick in this revival of Bernard Pomerance's 1977 play (which has transferred from Broadway) is a revelation. Cooper is touching and unshowy in the title role and, together with co-star Alessandro Nivola, completely carries Scott Ellis's sluggishly directed production.

Cynics will question the gym-toned, handsome Cooper's motives for doing this. ("Look at me playing ugly. I have no vanity!") But this is not a superficial performance: its strengths lie in its subtleties. As he is saved from a lifetime on the Victorian freakshow circuit by Dr Frederick Treves, Cooper slowly, carefully, unpeels Merrick's personality - the man behind the deformity.

As Treves attempts to socialise him, so Cooper introduces Merrick's humour, his interest in other people, his desire to love and be loved. This could be mawkish but Cooper delivers his lines with a crispness and an expert theatrical timing that avoids over-statement. It's also worth noting that his English accent is impeccable (unlike many of his co-stars, who appear to have been coached by Dick Van Dyke).

Of course, there is always an artfulness to playing Merrick. Like David Bowie and Billy Crudup, who have both taken the role (but unlike John Hurt in David Lynch's marvellously strange film), Cooper wears no prosthetics and relies on movement to convey the deformity. It's to his credit that you swiftly stop noticing the exaggerated, lumbering walk and oddly contorted mouth and instead are drawn into Merrick's psyche.

Cooper is well supported by Nivola as Treves. Nivola's compact build and buttoned-up Victorian sensibility make a neat contrast and he is terrific at conveying his character's conflicts: between being a rational man of science and becoming emotionally involved with his patient, and between the moral righteousness of saving Merrick and using him to further his own career.

Patricia Clarkson, however, is a major disappointment as Mrs Kendal, the high society actress who, courageously, puts aside her fears to befriend Merrick. Clarkson is one of the most highly regarded actresses on the US indie film circuit where, time after time, she has delivered delightful, naturalistic performances. It's frustrating that she is so oddly stilted here, delivering her lines in a strange, otherworldly way. Mrs Kendal is meant to be tough, savvy, amusing. In Clarkson's hands, she sounds like she's away with the fairies.

Clarkson's slow delivery is symptomatic of the production, in which dialogues are often stretched to a point where the dramatic pace is killed stone dead. Essentially, Pomerance's play is a chamber piece, and with more taut direction this should have been 90 minutes straight through. Instead, we get two 50-minute acts that are peppered with uncomfortable pauses.

The other insurmountable problem is that the play is simply not very good. You even suspect that, if there weren't such as perpetual interest in the subject matter and if the play didn't offer such meaty roles, it would never have survived into the 21st century.

Pomerance never gets to grips with the narrative of the story. The early scenes in which Treves rescues Merrick from a disreputable showman are dealt with too briefly, and appear as mere sketches. He wants to focus on the philosophising instead, on the idea that Merrick's hideousness makes us reflect on our own morality. Yet a firm feel for the plot would have laid the foundations and made all the subsequent theorising more convincing.

Still, The Elephant Man has been a smash on Broadway and will no doubt prove a fillip to London's West End.

(China Daily USA 06/22/2015 page11)