In
1974, Tom Stoppard’s comedy TRAVESTIES opened. In it the dramatist develops
a playful conceit about an imagined
encounter late in World War I involving James Joyce, then writing ULYSSES; Tristan
Tzara, the founder of Dadaism; and Lenin, the communist revolutionary, all of
whom happened to be in Zurich in 1917 but who probably never actually met. They
are enacted as remembered, many years later and somewhat hazily, by a minor
official named Henry Carr, a real person who also was there, and who recalls
them in the context of an amateur production of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING
EARNEST. As the Wikipedia essay on TRAVESTIES declares: “Stoppard uses this
production and Carr’s mixed feelings surrounding it as a framework to explore
art, the war and revolution.” I was reminded of Stoppard’s mostly well-received
play by Otho Eskin’s FINAL ANALYSIS, now at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
at the Pershing Square Signature Theatre. (It was seen in New York last year at
the Abingdon Theatre as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival.)
Ezra Barnes and Elizabeth Jasicki. Photo: John Quilty.
Mr. Eskin's drama is set in Vienna in 1910, several years
before the war, when the city’s residents included such famous figures as
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (Michael Satow); composer-conductor Gustav Mahler
(Ezra Barnes) and his wife, Alma (Elizabeth Jasicki); and the godfather of
psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (Gannon McHale), all (except Alma) Jews and all
characters in the play. Making things potentially even more interesting was the
presence in Vienna that year of another communist revolutionary, Josef Stalin
(Tony Naumovski), and an impoverished, would-be artist named Adolf Hitler (Ryan
Garbayo). Vienna in 1910 is described in the play as the center of European intellect and
culture, but Hitler calls it “a diseased whore.”
FINAL ANALYSIS, which runs 90 intermissionless
minutes, lacks anything like the conceptual framework of TRAVESTIES, but it, too,
touches on the relationship between art and revolution; the war, however, is
seen only as a coming apocalypse. However, the conditions that led to the war
are certainly present. In his program note, Mr. Eskin says: “I was drawn to
explore the world of Vienna on the eve of World War I: hot-house, perfumed
atmosphere in which the upper classes lived in the twilight of the Hapsburg
Empire, against a background of crushing poverty, corruption, ethnic hatred and
virulent anti-Semitism.” Unhappily, Mr. Eskin has none of Mr. Stoppard’s wit,
verbal facility, or imaginative genius, and, instead of an intellectually
stimulating confection about how these eminent cultural and political giants
might have interacted in some creatively memorable way against this fascinating
historical background—Stoppard might have cast them in a Viennese comic opera—FINAL
ANALYSIS instead opts for a more or less straightforward series of imaginary meetings,
most of which lack the spark of comic or tragic inspiration, and come off
seeming, if anything, “banal,” as my theatre guest suggested.
One other thing that the play has in
common with TRAVESTIES is that, for all the drama potentially inherent in its
characters, its concern for putting them on stage essentially to express
their ideas lacks a dramatic arc. In words that could equally as well apply
to FINAL ANALYSIS, Kenneth Tynan wrote about TRAVESTIES that it had
successfully created “a layer cake of pastiche,” only to add, “But layer cake,
as Marie Antoinette discovered too late, is no substitute for bread. To change
the metaphor, the scene resembles a triple-decker bus that isn’t going
anywhere. What it lacks, in common with the play as a whole, is the sine qua
non of theatre: namely, a narrative thrust that impels the characters, whether
farcically or tragically or in any intermediate mode, toward a credible state
of crisis, anxiety or desperation.”
The play’s principal through-line,
and the actual situation that inspired the play, is the story of Mahler’s
meeting, falling in love with, and marrying the much younger Alma, a great
beauty and socialite known for her love affairs, who thinks of Mahler as a
possible Nietzschean superman. Eventually, the marriage begins to crumble
because of her affairs and his insistence on her total obedience, subjugating her own
talents as a composer to his music and career.
Mahler (who died of a heart ailment a year later) suffers from bad dreams because
of Alma’s infidelity, and seeks help from Freud, whose sessions with him take
place in a café; however, in an odd directorial choice, the pair walk about the place instead of sitting
down, seemingly strolling through Vienna’s streets. (Mahler
allegedly feared the negative backlash about his mental state if he were seen
visiting Freud’s office.) This material—which formed the basis of a 2012 German
movie called MAHLER ON THE COUCH—is not especially dramatic, at least as shown
here, and is supported by a largely disconnected series of scenes affecting the other characters.
We learn of the young Wittgenstein’s claim that Europe is dying, of his disgust at its rising anti-Semitism, and of his appalling
misogynistic beliefs, including the declaration that women are the source of
all the disruptive forces in the world. We also watch Stalin’s attempts to proselytize
on behalf of Marx’s theories and his willingness to kill as many people as necessary
to realize his ideas. We likewise observe the plight of the young Hitler (coyly referred
to as the Young Man and never actually named), who was 21 in 1910, and who
blames the Jews for his failure as an artist. Not all the characters interact,
and very few of the ironies implicit in the mutual presence of these people are
explored. One possibility arises when Stalin and Hitler meet, and the future
Soviet dictator predicts Hitler’s greatness; the lack of anything in Hitler’s
oddball presence to support this prophecy sucks the air out of the scene. Another
forced irony occurs toward the play’s end when Hitler, standing on a bridge
over the Danube and contemplating death, seeks the advice of Freud, who just happens
to be passing by. Aided by Freud’s advice, Hitler launches into a ruthless
anti-Semitic diatribe and abandons thoughts of suicide; this allows the play
to conclude with the psychiatrist’s: “My God, what have I done?” Since this
is a total fiction, and the paradox suggested is an imagined one, the effect is
of a bomb that fails to detonate.
Perhaps a more evocatively theatrical and
rhythmically precise directorial approach might have raised the piece to a
higher level, but director Ludovica Villar-Hauser’s staging is pedestrian and
clumsy. Even the use of period music to tie scenes together is poorly handled;
a fuller and more dynamic sound design would have greatly enhanced a play in
which music is of such importance. Nor is the production aided by a
disappointingly dull cast. Not a single actor comes off as authentic, each one
struggling to find some clue to bringing their character to life and
to making the stilted dialogue sound real. Why is it that when American
actors play characters from other countries, especially cultivated ones, their
dialogue seems polished to the point of artificiality and lacking in colloquial
contractions and everyday expressions? And, as usual, there’s the old standby approach
of resorting to semi-British accents. Only one scene in the play is invested
with life; it occurs when Alma strikes up a conversation with Stalin in
a café and persuades him to show her his pistol. Suddenly, Ms. Jasicki as Alma
stops sounding pretentious and displays a sense of comic but honest pleasure at
the excitement she feels with a gun barrel against her belly.
Lee Savage’s set offers some basic furniture
but barely any scenery so that the rear wall can be used as a projection screen
by designer Annie Berman to place us in 1910 Vienna via video and still
projections of the city. The principal locale is a café presided over by a
formally dressed waiter (Stephen Bradbury), whose narration occasionally helps
to set the scene. Joyce Liao’s lighting doesn’t do enough to create the prewar Viennese
atmosphere, and the scene of Hitler on the bridge is much too dark. Jenny Green’s costumes are effective at evoking the prewar city but
having only a single female character to adorn limits her
opportunities.
There are simply too many things
going on in Mr. Eskin’s work—too many major characters with too many separate
ideas—that prevent it from cohering as a unified play. The lack of a conceptual
structure for the play’s mixture of historical and imaginary events and its
bland acting and direction turn what might have been a fascinating
exercise in historical speculation into what, in the final analysis, must be
deemed an ambitious failure.