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In the first years of the twentieth century, Swedish playwright, philosopher
and novelist August Strindberg was recovering from the mental breakdown that
was to divide his creative life. Before that almost everything he wrote was
about the battle of the sexes. In his later period he wrote almost
exclusively about maters mystical and philosophical. A Dream Play,
written between 1901 and 1902 and first performed in 1907, may be the best
known of his plays of this second period but even it is produced so
infrequently that the opportunity to see it actually performed on stage is a
rarity. In Open Theater’s extremely stylized production, that opportunity is
more intellectually interesting than dramatically and emotionally
fulfilling, but there are a number of rewards for the lengthy experience.
Storyline: The Hindu supreme god, Indra, sends his daughter to Earth to
determine what suffering is all about and why it exists among mortal humans
when it is such a foreign concept to the gods. She journeys through human
existence, learning that ambiguity and contradiction are widespread in the
human condition. The entire play is structured as a dream, avoiding
specifics of time and place and using repetition to create an at-times
disturbing deja vu.
Director Joe Martin has taken a very Swedish script and embellished it with
all the touches of Indian theatrical traditions that so fascinated
Strindberg at the time he wrote it. This play and the others of that period
in Strindberg’s life, To Damascus and The Dance of Death, are
seen as the birth of expressionism in theater and Martin has emphasized that
very quality. Don’t look for anything like Strindberg’s neighbor Henrik
Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler which premiered only ten years earlier. Then,
northern European Theater was dominated by plot and psychology. Here, just a
decade later, Strindberg was taking it into philosophy, replacing plotting
with rumination and realism with expressionism. Martin emphasizes the change
as he sets up colorful and impressionistic stage pictures at a leisurely
pace.
Martin’s cast is directed to use a highly stylized performance technique
with formal, almost stilted gestures for nearly every line of dialogue
(“Look out there” is accompanied by an arcing gesture of the arm, “I’m
surprised” by a crossing of the arms at the chest) that is at times
hypnotic. Richard Henrich, in the ambiguously named role of “the advocate,”
gets the most out of this technique, striking poses that could be statuary
on some of his more important and more visually evocative lines. Tricia
McCauley, as the daughter of the god whose journey is at the center of the
piece, takes a more subtle approach to the mannerisms, which works well
because she is on stage practically the entire three hours and overdoing the
gestures would quickly become tiresome.
As an
atmospheric piece, the combination of set, costume, lights, choreography and
music are critical. The Takoma Theatre, still showing signs of an ongoing
renovation effort, has an extremely big stage area to fill but practically
no wing or fly space. So most of what the designers produce is either on
stage all night or fairly simple roll-on roll-off set pieces. Most of the
money for the production appears to have been spent on the costumes which
are colorful and sumptuous in a strongly Indian appearance. There are
evocative touches such as the pouring of water from one bucket to another
and back to give the sound of the sea, and the three member sitar, surbahar
and percussion band adds a great deal to the overall Indian feeling of the
piece.
Written by August Strindberg. Directed by Joe Martin. Music by Shubha
Sankaran. Choreography by Christel Stevens. Design: Michael C. Stepowany and
Mahima Poddar (set) Evgenia Salazar (costumes) Elizabeth Jernigan and Annie
Houston (masks) Nicholas Johansen (lights) Page Carr (photography) Patti
Baer (stage manager). Cast: Nazia Chaudhry, Kim Curtis, Anne Marie Dalton,
Colin DiGarbo, Chris Davenport, Richard Hernich, Annie Houston, Elizabeth
Jernigan, Ed Johnson, Jai Khalsa, Maxine Lausell, Joshua McCarthy, Tricia
McCauley, Ellie Nicoll, Gae Schmitt, Brandon Welch. |
