62. BASTARDS OF STRINDBERG
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It’s
hard to repress the urge to use the word “pretentious” when describing BASTARDS
OF STRINDBERG, an evening of four one-acts inspired by Swedish playwright
August Strindberg’s 1888 naturalistic masterpiece, MISS JULIE. On taking your
seat at the Lion Theatre, the first thing you see on the black stage, bare except for a black
dinner table and chairs, is Anette Norgaard, an attractive woman sitting
motionless in semi-profile, spotlighted in an elevated corner of the back wall.
No matter how early you arrive she’s there, waiting for the play to begin. Even
when the house lights dim she waits there endlessly, until you begin to wonder
if this is meant intentionally as a way of creating an air of mystery, or if,
perhaps, something has gone wrong technically and she’s unable to escape her
lofty perch. Then, breaking the puzzlingly somnambulant mood is a woman’s amplified
voice on the PA system, welcoming the audience and giving it the usual preshow
instructions. Well, there goes the mystery. Finally, as Ms. Norgaard begins
singing atmospheric, lyric-less music of her own composition (abetted by Amy
Altadonna’s sound design and Elyssa Samsel’s violin accompaniment) in what
sounds like a faux CIRQUE DU SOLEIL mode, the cast of seven enters down the
theatre’s single aisle and takes the stage, rearranging the stage furniture and
dancing as if they were the servants in Strindberg’s play at their Midsummer
Night’s Eve revels.
These
actors, some of whom will appear in more than one play on the program, soon
take up places on the walls bordering the stage, a tired theatrical conceit
perhaps designed in this case to remind us of Strindberg’s comments about
spectators at naturalistic presentations being like flies on the wall. During the interludes separating one play
from the other, as Ms. Norgaard sings, all the actors will dance, some of them rather awkwardly, in
oddly choreographed (by Lauren Camp) sequences, only to take up new positions
on the perimeter as the next piece commences. In one scene they stand rigidly
side by side in profile along the stage left wall, like Roman statues in a
museum. Despite all this unnecessarily pretentious (sorry, I couldn’t help it) theatrical
folderol, however, all great Neptune’s ocean will not wash clean the general
inadequacy of the acting, direction, and writing in this unfortunate misfire.
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| BASTARDS OF STRINDBERG company. Photo: Kait Ebinger. |
BASTARDS OF STRINDBERG is the ambitious brainchild of the
Scandinavian American Theatre Company, which, in 2012, commissioned four
playwrights, two Americans and two Swedish, to write short plays responding to
the ideas and emotions generated by MISS JULIE as a way of memorializing the
centenary of Strindberg’s death, and introducing “emerging” Swedish playwrights
to the American stage. As ROSENKRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN, Tom Stoppard’s HAMLET
spinoff, so brilliantly demonstrates, the notion of creating a new play out of
a famous one and thus examining the original’s relevance in the contemporary
world is certainly a viable one; however, when it’s done as part of a
commissioned project it can easily create work that seems forced rather than
inspired by burning need. Commissioning a playwright to write whatever he or
she wishes is one thing; doing so based on a specific theme or subject is
something different. (A recent exception might be BAUER, at 59E59, commissioned
to dramatize an inherently powerful true-life story.)
Revivals
of MISS JULIE are staples of the modern repertory; only last season St. Ann’s
Warehouse presented MIES JULIE, a well-received adaptation set within a South African
environment. A movie of Strindberg’s play, starring Jessica Chastain, is also forthcoming.
Strindberg’s “naturalistic tragedy,” set in a basement kitchen on Midsummer’s
Eve, a night potent with life-changing possibilities, is famous for its
groundbreaking treatment of sexual, class, psychological, and gender themes.
Miss Julie, the spoiled, 25-year-old daughter of a Swedish count, flirts with
and has sex with Jean, her father’s valet, and thus of much lower social class.
Shamed by her transgressive behavior, and believing she loves him, she’s
prepared to flee with him to open a hotel in Switzerland. Jean is engaged to
the servant Kristin (who nods off during crucial scenes), however, and backs
out of the plan. Faced with the count’s return, Julie has nowhere to turn; Jean
hands her his razor and she goes off to commit suicide.
While
the one-acts in BASTARDS OF STRINDBERG vary in the degree to which they reflect
the plot and circumstances of MISS JULIE, it would be hard to imagine anyone
appreciating them without at least a cursory knowledge of the original. Some of
these plays’ allusions are immediately recognizable, such as the sexual byplay
and the business with the razor, some are narrower, such as references to
Switzerland, animals, flowers, and excrement. In tune with today’s feminist
sensibilities, Julie now usually takes the upper hand in her power struggle
with Jean. Despite its respected position as a pillar of the early modern
theatre, MISS JULIE is not as widely familiar as HAMLET, which may partly
account for only a dozen people being present when I attended on Tuesday evening, a number
diminished by two midway through.
The
four plays, in order, are David Bar Katz’s “Chanting Hymns to Fruitless Moons,”
Linda Ekdahl’s “Midsummer at ‘Tyrolen,’” Dominique Morisseau’s “High Powered,”
and Andreas Boonstra’s “The Truth about Fröken Julie.” Ms. Ekdahl and Mr.
Boonstra are the Swedish contributors. Alicia Dhyana House directed the first
and last play, and Henning Hegland the second and third. Apart from “High
Powered,” the plays all toy with surrealistic or absurdist effects. The
set, credited to Starlet Jacobs, is little more than a group of chairs and
tables, rearranged for each playlet on the black stage. Yuki Nakase’s lighting does
what it can under limited circumstances. Throughout, the actors wear simple
black and white ensembles, designed by Nicole Wee.
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| From left: Ingrid Kullberg-Benz, Vanessa Johansson, Devin B. Tillman. Photo: Kait Ebinger. |
In the
first play, “Chanting Hymns to Fruitless Moons” (a title with unfortunate
echoes of an underwear brand) Young Julie (Vanessa Johansson), barefoot and
dressed in a short, white shift, is mirrored by her older self (Ingrid
Kullberg-Benz), wearing a formal black dress with a sequined shoulder jacket. Young
Julie can commune with the older Julie (it’s Midsummer’s Eve, after all) and,
following her advice, subverts Strindberg’s game plan of having Julie die by
turning Jean (Devin B. Tillman) into the suicide victim at the end. Insecure
actors, plodding tempo, and clumsy staging provide little support for this dull
trifle.
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| Rikke Lylloff, Albert Bendix. Photo: Kait Ebinger. |
The
thinly drawn “Midsummer at ‘Tyrolen’” sees Julie (Rikke Lylloff), Kristin
(Ingrid Kullberg-Bendz), and Jean (Albert Bendix) as modern day characters
hanging out at a rundown restaurant, the Tyrolen, a replacement for MISS JULIE’s
kitchen, with Jean hoping to use Julie’s capital to go into business for
himself with a trucking company. Each actor also doubles as their own internal
commentator, making statements about their character’s motivations. STRANGE
INTERLUDE it’s not. Once again, flabby performances and direction only make
things murkier.
The
only play on the program with recognizable characters, a reasonably compelling narrative,
dialogue worth listening to, and consistently strong performances is Ms. Morisseau’s “High
Powered,” which deviates most sharply from Strindberg’s play by focusing on
Kristin and Jean. In this telling, Kristin is a contemporary black woman named
Mya (Zenzele Cooper), who works for Julie as a dog walker. She and her black
boyfriend, the Jean character, named Darrin (Devin B. Tillman, understudying
for Kwasi Osei), are preparing to move from their Bronx hole-in-the-wall to a
Manhattan studio being paid for by Julie, whose father has given Jean, Julie’s
chauffeur, a well-paying sales job in his business firm. Jean, who claims to have
mathematical prowess, claims this is the reason for his imminent success, but
Mya suspects there’s something more involved with regard to Darrin’s
relationship with Julie. Mya speaks in ungrammatical black vernacular, which
the implausibly articulate Darrin (who nonetheless thinks “be” is a preposition) is
constantly correcting. The play explores issues such as race envy (Darrin seeks
to become “like them”) and the disparity between the 99 and the 1. Perhaps
because the characters, dialogue, and situations are more immediate than in the other
plays, the acting (especially that of Ms. Cooper, who gives the best performance
of the evening) and direction are more convincing. The play may stand out because of
its relative credibility rather than because it offers anything particularly outstanding; it
still takes a stretch of the imagination to accept the dialogue as reflective
of these particular characters, rather than as words put in their mouths to
fulfill the dramatist’s agenda. And it's hard to ignore a scene where Darrin gets so
angry he practically strangles Mya; a few moments later, after she gets her
breath back, she’s reconciled to remaining with him. Shades of Janny Palmer
Rice!!!
Last,
and not quite least, is the one play with some comedic content, “The Truth
about Fröken Julie” (“fröken” means “Miss). Also set in today’s world, it
includes music by Bob Dylan sung by Jean (Drew O’Kane), and the Dead Boys, sung
by Kristin (Rikke Lylloff), and contains an extended sequence using drawings on
a whiteboard to deconstruct Jean’s tall tale, told to Julie (Vanessa
Johansson); it concerns a time in his childhood when he escaped from her father’s exotic
outhouse by diving into the excrement and exiting through a rear door.
Whatever. The last third of the piece shifts into metatheatrical territory as
the characters, obviously stimulated by their chatter about lies, begin to
confront their own existence as characters in a play, directly addressing the audience
about it. Julie’s polemic informs us of how she has a big problem with
theatre “when we try to make this unreal fantasy-thing as close to real as
possible. It becomes so unreal.” I hope she doesn’t think the play she’s in
offers a meaningful alternative.
The
final line of “The Truth about Fröken Julie,” spoken by Julie, says it all:
“Just tell me stories, give me relationships, feelings, messages, politics,
music. Something I can believe in.” To which I counter, please do.