Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
Monday, 17 December 2007
Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe, adapted by Garland Wright. Directed by Jesse Berger. Set design by John Arnone. Costume design by Clint Ramos. Lighting design by Peter West. Composer: Scott Killian; sound designed by Scott Killian and Chris Peifer. With Raum-Aron, Arthur Bartow, Kenajuan Bentley, Rob Breckenridge, Wesley Broulik, Joseph Costa, William DeMeritt, Davis Hall, Lucas Hall, Randy Harrison, Claire Lautier, Garth Wells McCardle, Matthew Rauch, Derrick LeMont Sanders, Raphael Nash Thompson, Patrick Vaill and Marc Veitor. A presentation of Red Bull Theater, Jesse Berger, artistic director. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes, one intermission. Reviewed at the 16 December 2007 performance. At the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, 11 December 2007-13 January 2008. Ticket and schedule information at Ticket Central.
A feverishly erotic revival of Christopher Marlowe's tragedy of desire and politics
Erotic desire and the lust for power have been strange and sweaty bedpartners from Salome and Herod to the smarmier pairing of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. The theatre, especially the Elizabethan and Jacobean tragic theatre, has always been a unique situs for the partnership; apart from whatever transpired up on the stage, the auditorium and theatre building itself, recent research tells us, was also the site of various illicit pairings between the upper classes and prostitutes (as well as those men and women who exchanged bodily fluids without an associated economic exchange). The erotic dynamic between stage and auditorium, too, found its way into the drama of the time, from Christopher Marlowe all the way to the Jacobean revenge tragedies that were the art's stock-in-trade until 1642, when the Puritan Parliament closed the theatres.
This was the age of Shakespeare, whose more classical and humanistic worldview tended to eclipse the wilder heights of language and imagination to which the erotic tragedians of the period aspired (though Shakespeare too, in his later more complex work about sexuality and power in Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra and Measure for Measure, climbed to those same heights). Case in point: Marlowe's Edward the Second (1592/93), Garland Wright's adaptation of which is now enjoying a new production by the Red Bull Theater under the direction of Jesse Berger.
Edward the Second continues to hold particular fascination for 20th century audiences. Brecht's adaptation and production of the play in 1923 found an Elizabethan equivalent for his own erotic poetics of the period, and as recently as 1991 Derek Jarman's film brought the play into the politics of the gay rights movement and the Stonewall riots. Berger and his fine cast, without irony or parody, leap fearlessly into the swirling passions of Marlowe's play, as they did in their 2005 production of The Revenger's Tragedy, drawing from it the erotics and lusts that, though no longer present in the auditorium itself, have their rightful place on the stages of a world in crisis.
Edward II, upon ascending the throne of England, recalls his beloved "favorite" Gaveston from Paris as one of his first acts; when Gaveston returns, Edward showers favors and power upon him, much to the disgust of Edward's wife Isabella and the peers of England. The disgust doesn't reside only in Edward and Gaveston's shameless and honest homosexuality, but also in considerable envy and simple dismay (indeed, one of the earls' greatest disapprovals is that, given Gaveston's low birth, the pairing is morganatic). A second desire driving the play is that of Mortimer for the neglected Isabella. Edward is forced to banish Gaveston once again; when that doesn't improve matters, Gaveston returns, only to be killed. Here, homosexuality is not a love that dare not speak its name -- instead it's shouted from the rooftops, though this is just as tragic in its implications as its repression.
Marc Vietor as Edward grows in stature as the play progresses; seemingly a licentious libertine in the first scenes, by the end of the play, chained in a sewer, filth up to his knees and near an ignominious death, he reaches the authority of a true tragic hero, alone with the consciousness of the whirring wheel of fortune (a wheel that Mortimer, too, at the end of the play, acknowledges).
Berger's pace in guiding his 17-member cast across the small Peter Jay Sharp Theatre space is unflagging, and, as in his production of Revenger's Tragedy, he has encouraged his performers to leap head first into the dark abyss that constitutes Marlowe's worldview. Matthew Rauch's Mortimer is quickly seized by the ambition to which his disgust has led, and Lautier's Isabella is consumed by sexual frustration -- she is sexually a stranger to her husband, as she, French-born, is a stranger to the land of which she is the queen. Vietor, Rauch and Lautier are sharp-edged figures of desire and power, denied, satisfied and undeniably fleshed -- they present themselves not particularly as characters or even as symbols, but as the forces of passion themselves, elicited and shaped by Marlowe's fervid linguistic imagination.
And they are daring. I go back and forth on the question of nudity on the New York stage, which has become such a cliche as to be utterly expected in everything from the Living Theatre to Broadway; and when you have costumes the quality of Clint Ramos', you wonder if the director shouldn't have more trust in his designers. But here, after some thought, I have to come down on the side of explicitness. The tableaux of male nude flesh here, the loving and caresses of Edward and Gaveston (Kenajuan Bentley, in a performance of considerable emotional complexity; one wonders if Edward's mad passion is returned by Gaveston, and perhaps Gaveston isn't sure himself), are ultimately necessary as a presentation of the tenderness of any and all desire for the flesh of another once it has met its satiation: it presents the approach of love to a possible redemption of the self. And, as Bataille recognised, it must be a naked flesh.
In presenting the play without a wink to the audience, Berger retains the fluidity and passion of the work. He presents the play on set designer John Arnone's sharply divided stage, playing spaces running on a parallel to the proscenium (emphasising the presentationality of the work; there's not the escape that a diagonally-oriented set would provide) upon platforms set on a variety of heights, preserving the fluidity of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramaturgy. Ramos's costumes, which run the range of texture and sensuality from the tight trousers of the leather trade to Claire Lautier's couture-inspired black outfits (not without sado-masochistic touches themselves) and the long black coats with upturned collars of 1930s fascism in Italy and Germany for Mortimer and the peers, are themselves delightful; Lautier's costume changes reflect Isabella's own desperation to attract, her husband or Mortimer; either will do.
Among the other members of the cast, Davis Hall and Joseph Costa as Lancaster and Warwick make an entertaining Two Stooges of bureaucratic power; Rob Breckenridge as Lightborn is a dark executioner, Wesley Broulik a comic jailer and the 11-year-old Raum-Aron seethes with a most unchildlike ambition and bloodthirstiness in the final scene. Scott Killian's percussive score provides the production's severe heartbeat.
NOTE: Red Bull will present a reading of Brecht's version of Edward II as part of their Revelation Readings series on 7 January, featuring members of the cast of the mainstage production.
Posted at 12.18 pm in /Notices
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Monday, 17 December 2007
Why don't we have a national theatre in the US? First, we don't need one; second, we shouldn't have one. The reasons why are in my latest Guardian (UK) post, "Why America has no national theatre."
Posted at 10.31 am in /Guardian
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