Vincent in Brixton: portrait of the artist as a young man

The slashed ear, the asylum stays, the suicide at age 37 — we know the crazy parts of Vincent van Gogh’s story. But who was the prolific Dutch painter before all of that? Nicholas Wright’s Vincent in Brixton, directed by Karen Paisley at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, offers part of an answer, with a view of van Gogh at ages 20 and 22, residing in a London suburb and uttering at one point, “I am not an artist.”

The playwright’s fictitious examination of what may have influenced this painter early in his adult life — it won the Olivier Award for Best Play in 2003 and was nominated for a Tony that same year — is anchored by some basic facts. Van Gogh was given the same first name as a brother stillborn a year before him; he was employed as an art dealer with Goupil & Cie; and he was attracted to the daughter of his Brixton landlady. But Wright’s story homes in on one household where he lodged in 1873 (period costumes by Erica Sword), and on particular passions, relationships and conflicts.

Seth Jones is excellent in the title role, in a performance that’s simultaneously emotional and restrained. His Vincent, a naive and tactless “foreigner” at first, can barely keep a lid on youthful excitability and boiling-over hormones, though he also remains the serious, reserved son of a pastor. That duality carries on later, as Jones’ van Gogh struggles to reconcile the emerging inner bohemian artist with his inclination toward the religious life.

The fairly long play — each act lasts about an hour — is an absorbing one, and the cast is strong, particularly Shelley Wyche as van Gogh’s widowed landlady, Ursula Loyer. Hers is an authentic and affecting performance as a mother, a businesswoman, and a person in middle age finding life after prolonged grief. Also good in supporting roles are Elise Poehling, as Loyer’s daughter, Eugenie, and Kenneth Wigley as Sam Plowman, another boarder. (Dialects, though, sounded highly variable at the show I attended, and some enunciations toward the end of Act 2 were less than clear.)

In real life, van Gogh pursued a ministerial profession for a time and became a serious artist much later — an artistic career that produced an amazing amount of work in a short time. But here, in Brixton, we see a portrait of a brilliant if also troubled young man.