In the annals of matrimony, few pages are more dog-eared and annotated than those on Ernest Hemingway, whose four marriages — and numerous flirtations and infidelities — seem as essential to his writing as his war experiences. In his major novels — “The Sun Also Rises,” “A Farewell to Arms,” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” — war and love are inextricably linked and implicitly compared, such that we may reasonably ask: for Hemingway, which was the fierier crucible? Sometimes it even seems that, compared to the wounds of love, shrapnel in the knee may as well be a splinter. This may be because Hemingway’s richest experiences were domestic rather than military. Serving as an ambulance driver in Italy during the first World War may have given him a taste of adventure, but it was in the trenches of his marriages — and two formative infatuations — that he earned his bona fides. The heart pinned to his sleeve was his own.
So one surprise of “Hemingway’s Wife,” now on stage at The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth, which tells Hemingway’s story in four phases that correspond to his marriages, is not that it exists, but that it has taken so long for someone to write it. The other surprise is that it is a musical. Written by Boston- and New York City-based composer Erin Murray Quinlan, the show attempts to present Hemingway through the kaleidoscope lens of the partnerships that shaped and re-shaped him over nearly four decades.
If this sounds ambitious, that’s because it is; it may also sound unlikely to cohere, prone to summary, and merely informative rather than imaginative. The worst of these fears are realized in this production, which feels like a scrupulously researched report, lacking the crackle and color of drama. Quinlan seems to know everything about Hemingway, but she demonstrates no feel for him — no intuitive understanding of his decisions and inspirations, let alone, and most damningly, his voice. Quinlan continues to work on the play and has been taking notes at recent performances; one hopes that future drafts will trim the play’s excessive length, punch up its frequently listless dialogue, and resolve problems of staging that too often reduce the action to unintended farce.
Though the songs sit uneasily with the plot — and there are far too many of them — Quinlan has an undeniably fluid facility with melody.
Part of the problem is that the show is narrated by Hemingway himself (from what vantage is left unclear: is he dead, or is his 1961 suicide just over the nearing horizon?) so we are subjected to the theatrical equivalent of someone else’s vacation slide-show. Of course, there is already a beautiful slide-show of Hemingway’s life, or at least the Parisian part of it: his own brilliant, posthumously-published memoir, “A Moveable Feast.” Rendered in aptly impressionistic washes of color and movement, the memoir is a muted but melancholy eulogy for the young Hemingway and his times. Quinlan’s play, by contrast, is “This Is Your Life.” Hemingway explains some event, and then a scene follows that dramatizes the event. Characters join Hemingway on stage, they kiss or fight as the script demands, and, after a few lines, the scene ends and the secondary characters depart, leaving Hemingway to resume his bardic role. No feeling can properly take root in this seismically unsettled narrative ground.
Another problem is that the author’s attitude toward Hemingway is inscrutable. On the one hand, he is often depicted as a boor — a profane, irrational egotist. On the other hand, his voice dominates the show. Though his wives’ letters are quoted and paraphrased, we still see the women through Hemingway’s eyes. Even Martha Gellhorn, played with dry wit and a striking physical similarity by Constance Witman, though spirited and independent, comes across as a parody of female independence: an interpretation of female power by someone who resented it. Is the show an accusation, an exoneration, or an explication? Does it hold Hemingway to account or give him yet another medium to develop his narrative of valor and victimhood?
Though the songs sit uneasily with the plot — and there are far too many of them — Quinlan has an undeniably fluid facility with melody. Her tunes are clearly inspired by those of Richard Rodgers (with an assist from Frederick Loewe), and her clever, acerbic lyrics owe a debt to Sondheim. There are a few poignant stand-outs, though even the best of her songs are marred by occasionally expository lyrics and rhymes that aren’t quite as devilish as they were meant to be.
Among the performers, Christopher Savage as Hemingway is wonderfully stentorian and captivatingly pompous, though he is not as comfortable in song as he is in speech. Jennifer Henry plays Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife, with bracing self-effacement. Elise M. Pratt, as Pauline Pfeiffer, Hemingway’s second wife, has by far the strongest voice in the cast — her love songs to Hemingway tremble with yearning — but her mannerisms are too formalized to convince us of her seductiveness. Liz Locke, as Hemingway’s fourth and final wife, Mary Welsh, is refreshingly self-possessed. Locke is not much of a singer, but, then again, Welsh often feels like an asterisk or an appendix to Hemingway’s life anyway, so Locke’s role is small and her vocal timidity isn’t problematic. With her blonde Marilyn Monroe curls, she has both the sexiness and the resolve to guide the declining Hemingway through his frustrating senescence.
His artistic powers in decline, his health deteriorating, his depression unappeasable, Hemingway in the 1950s was like a king watching his conquests slip away. Someone should write a musical about that.
“Hemingway’s Wife,” directed by Gary Locke, is on stage through June 14 at The Players’ Ring, 105 Marcy St., Portsmouth. Tickets are $15. Call 603-436-8123 or visit playersring.org.
Top: Liz Locke as Mary Welsh and Christopher Savage as Ernest Hemingway in Hemingway's Wife.