MURDER by TIMIDITY BAM's Next Wave and Classic Revivals

MURDER BY TIMIDITY BAM’s Next Wave and Classic Revivals

Brian Walsh

Euripides, Medea, The Abbey Theatre, director: Deborah Warner; William Shakespeare, Macbeth, The Ninagawa Company, director: Yukio Ninagawa. Both presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Fall 2002.

he Brooklyn Academy of Music’s pression that as Next Wave turns twenty, Next Wave Festival celebrated BAM is intent on cultivating an audi- Tits twentieth year this season ence for increasingly conventional the- with two classical revivals conspicuous atre. If these productions represent a among its theatre offerings. Anchoring “next wave” of classic revivals, the term the festival were glitzy, large scale pro- itself is in need of an overhaul. ductions of Euripides’ Medea and Shake- speare’s Macbeth by prominent directors Fundamentally, both productions failed affiliated with major theatre outfits: to engage or even acknowledge an audi- Deborah Warner’s Medea, from Dublin’s ence in any substantive way, and hence famed Abbey Theatre, and Yukio feared rather than embraced their own Ninagawa’s Macbeth, developed in his theatricality. Or, perhaps a better way of own Ninagawa Company in Japan. Both putting it would be that both produc- directors delivered sensational renditions tions defined theatricality as spectacle of creepy old standards, but beneath a alone, with little sense of how to put polished veneer of competence, these spectacle in dialogue with ideas. Warner productions were strangely hollow and and Ninagawa more often than not safe. A hallmark of innovative theatre is cited familiar conventions of mainstream the ability to re-open classic plays and film and television to produce a flat render them in creative and original viewing experience in which the rich ways, but these versions of Medea and visuals and technical acumen of the Macbeth lacked the real boldness or productions substituted for intellectual fresh vision one hopes for from Next inquiry. They each relied on the “pres- Wave. Improbable as it might seem tige” of the plays to justify interest, and considering their content, both of these the plays’ dark subject matter to provide murderous plays were presented as cal- some kick. But the mere fact that the culated crowd pleasers, leaving the im- content of a play like Medea, and to a

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028103321781592 by guest on 24 September 2021 lesser extent Macbeth, is risqué does not suggesting, was less twentieth-century ensure that productions of them are theatre than contemporary film and necessarily edgy. Both of these produc- television melodrama. The set and cos- tions, in distinct but related ways, lacked tumes suggested the location of the a real commitment to using theatre as a action to be the patio of a posh Califor- means to explore the taboos and diffi- nia house, perhaps in Laurel Canyon or cult ethical questions the plays raise. Beverly Hills, with a wading pool in the center, the kind of attractive affluence Staged in BAM’s beautifully dilapidated that in the popular imagination always Harvey Theatre, Warner’s Medea squan- seems to belie something unseemly un- dered the immense theatricality of its derneath. Warner is interested in a Medea space. There are fairly well established that would speak to the tension in our conventions in mainstream film and own culture between the pieties of our television for depicting frenzy giving rhetoric on “children” and “family” and way to tragedy, from innumerable cop the violence and brutality that continu- and crime shows to serial killer-themed ally explode within families and against movies, and these were the conventions children, infamous child-killers like Su- through which Warner sought to work, san Smith being only the most extreme reaching for uncritical affect in the face example. The result is much like one of of a horrific tale. Warner’s highly ac- those television films of some sordid claimed production offered accessible story “ripped from the headlines,” aim- performances but little insight into the ing to produce a kind of lurid, and play’s dark and unsettling depiction of a ultimately passive and unreflective, fas- boundless fury that culminates in infan- cination with evil. In the attempt to ticide. Scorned by her lover Jason, whom make the story feel so contemporary, she had aided in capturing the Golden Warner’s Medea loses some of its power Fleece through her magic and machina- as an expression of a culture that is far tions, Medea kills their children in a removed from our own. rage against the injustices done to her. Medea, to say the least, is a challenging This line of critique is not to suggest the story, thick with political, social, and production should have been spoken in sexual complications. Warner attempted Attic Greek, or the actors should have to re-imagine Medea by elucidating worn masks or togas, or that perform- Euripides’ version of the Greek myth as ances should not strive to break their modern domestic tragedy. If one wanted objects out of their original historical a theatrical analogue, the general tone moment in some way. There is no such of the production, including the highly thing as “authentic” performance of any naturalistic, method-acting style, evoked canonical drama, least of all Greek Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, drama. The problem isn’t that Warner with perhaps a touch of Sam Shepard. doesn’t “respect” the classic, it’s that she respects it too much and in an incon- This Medea was the story of a family gruous way, wanting to keep its lan- unit in crisis, a desperate and soon to be guage and narrative intact in a setting mortally abusive mother lamenting her and style that fight against it. What I children’s absent father. But the real find most lacking from Warner’s Medea, context for the production, as I’ve been to the point that it felt superficial, was

WALSH / Murder by Timidity ᭿ 83

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028103321781592 by guest on 24 September 2021 simply any acknowledgement that this dragons to rescue her. In Warner’s pro- is an ancient play infused with ancient, duction, the play ends with Medea, still and in many ways alien, perspectives on fresh from the killing, ineffectually issues such as the meaning of sexual splashing the distraught Jason (Jonathan unions, the ownership of children, dy- Cake) with water from the wading pool, nastic alliances, and the political and meant as an unsettling “tick” in the face social significance of exile. The natural- of horrible acts that again rather blandly istic acting and the contemporary set- evoke the gestures and affect of a ting did not alienate the ancient text to Hannibal Lecter, or any “psychopath” allow such ideas to be explored, but of countless thriller films. The failure to rather made the play seem more a fa- have Medea rescued by a deus ex machina miliar species of our own age’s psycho- at the end confirmed the production’s ses than it is. In effect, it shut down desire to anchor itself in the realm of audience inquiry by making it seem like realism and modern domestic melo- just more of our daily fare of gruesome drama, an attempt to claim the play as news stories. The text used was a lucid, an expression of the present. Warner’s supple, and ultimately traditional trans- reading impoverished Medea’s horrific lation by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic strangeness and obscured the more pro- Raphael. An adaptation of the Medea vocative opportunity it offers us to put story would perhaps address contempo- the morbid preoccupations of an an- rary preoccupations more powerfully cient culture in dialectical juxtaposition than attempts to force the text to speak with our own unseemly fascinations. to us in ways it may not be fully able. Warner’s Medea had at its center a Two moments in particular stand out as dominating performance by Fiona Shaw, emblematic of the production’s flaws. whose unmistakable theatrical star power The first is the scene in which Medea is no doubt partly responsible for the (Fiona Shaw) murders her children. wide praise the production has received. Typical of Greek tragedy, this is a terri- The lead performance is indeed almost fying offstage moment, indicated by enough to recommend the production, “cries from within” and verbal prompts. but is also symptomatic of the produc- In Warner’s rendition, the lights dim, tion’s conceptual weakness. Shaw’s the “haunting” music reverberates louder Medea was a kind of split persona, and louder until it is almost deafening, tapping into stereotypes of agitated while Medea stabs her boys against a women in performance. There were semi-transparent backdrop, blood splat- touches of the comical neurosis per- tering vividly. The moment came off as fected by Lucille Ball and Katherine pure schlock and seemed like a cheap Hepburn on display as Shaw jumped, grab for affect that quoted tired cin- stamped her feet, and shook her fists ematic conventions. Second is the like a sit-com or romantic comedy ac- production’s intervention in the play’s tress whose designs have been thwarted. ending. In most versions of the Medea There was also a suggestion of Glenn story, including Euripides’, Medea is Close in Fatal Attraction and the man- saved from the consequences of her nerisms and postures of a woman driven crime by her grandfather, Helios the “psycho” which that film helped make sun God, who sends a chariot drawn by common. The choice to portray Medea

84 ᭿ PAJ 74

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028103321781592 by guest on 24 September 2021 Medea, The Abbey Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Photo: Courtesy Stephanie Berger.

Macbeth, The Ninagawa Company, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Photo: Courtesy Richard Termine. WALSH / Murder by Timidity ᭿ 85

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028103321781592 by guest on 24 September 2021 in these ways is a potentially interesting Japanese feudal costumes and imple- one, as though more modern modes of ments (as an exception to the feudal playing might de-familiarize and illu- setting, there were some ill advised ma- minate this antique, perhaps over- chine gun and helicopter sound effects determined figure of female evil. But that framed battle scenes, which seemed the characterization here felt forced, more like an afterthought than an at- and Shaw’s performance was marred by tempt to create the kinds of provocative these turns toward camp hysterics and anachronisms achieved in many Shake- hammy villainy. It was ultimately a speare productions and film adapta- somewhat unimaginative attempt to fit tions). The English text that flashed norms of depicting a woman under across screens above and to the sides of intense mental strain than a real explo- the stage was apparently an English ration of character. translation of the Japanese translation the cast used. The nature of the English The immense popularity of the Warner/ text was unclear, though. At some mo- Shaw Medea, and its subsequent move ments, Shakespeare’s exact language was to Broadway, are not in themselves rea- used, and at others, there appeared some sons to critique the work. The commer- odd interpolations or re-phrasings that cial and critical celebration do, how- often made pedestrian expressions out ever, suggest that this production, from of Shakespeare’s poetry. its inception, was conceived to be a hit. The same can be said of Yukio Nin- This Macbeth was sensational, loud, agawa’s Japanese language production and florid, perhaps even gaudy, but it of Macbeth, which strove to please offered little by way of an interesting through a conventional realization of interpretation or communicative idiom Shakespeare’s well-known tale of mur- to justify all the bother. The production’s derous ambition and its erosion of the moments of excess were hit and miss. psyche. It is difficult to know what For instance, the live horses that appear attracted Next Wave’s organizers to this on stage in the opening few minutes production, aside from its having an seemed like a nice touch, but were internationally renowned director and ultimately quite pointless. Likewise, the financial backing of the Japan Agency many of the overwrought sound effects for Cultural Affairs. There was perhaps and musical flourishes were attention some sense that the mere fact that it was getting, but quickly became downright in Japanese was enough to make it garish, particularly the recurring “Dun interesting or exotic. Ninagawa’s Macbeth Dun Dun!!!” sound effect that accom- disappointed not because it was flawed panies Banquo’s ghostly appearance at but precisely because it was so ordinary. Macbeth’s banquet. On the side of Ninagawa transformed the ample stage under-staging, the climactic fight be- of BAM’s Opera House to a canvas for tween Macbeth and Macduff was dully big screen epic story telling. choreographed and tediously lengthy.

The result was a thoroughly standard Moments of genuine style were rare. production, in the Anglo-American The murder of Banquo was perhaps the Shakespeare tradition, that happened to only really interesting instance of move- be in Japanese, and to be outﬁtted with ment, as the killers and Banquo negoti-

86 ᭿ PAJ 74

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028103321781592 by guest on 24 September 2021 ated through a decelerated, acrobatic was effectively expressionistic, the act- struggle, and when Macbeth delivered ing, particularly from Toshiaki Karasawa the famous “Tomorrow and tomorrow” and Shinobu Otake as Macbeth and speech, from the depths of his increas- Lady Macbeth, was earnest without being nihilism, a chandelier swooped back ing compelling, an observation that can and forth above his head, like a pendu- be extended to the production as a lum predicating his inevitable decapita- whole. tion by Macduff. Ninagawa did also deliver a few effective images. When, in The safe versions of “classics” I’ve been fulﬁllment of the witches’ cryptic proph- discussing present an open question esy, Birnam Wood at last comes to about Next Wave: is this the shape of Dunsinane, the actors, like a druid things to come, or is it merely represen- marching band, held and swayed long, tative of a strategic portion of the festi- leafy branches that momentarily oc- val necessary to keep it in business? cluded the stage. And at the play’s end, Arthur Miller once claimed that America the large sliding doors that had been has “shows,” but not theatre, a fairly used for scene changes and backgrounds self-evident distinction that is useful in throughout the production were slowly summarizing these productions of Medea drawn shut in front of the action, gradu- and Macbeth. BAM’s Next Wave con- ally drowning out Malcolm’s ending tinues to attract its share of new experi- pronouncements, as if to emphasize not mental theatre artists, as well as estab- their ringing clarity, but their ineffectu- lished artists working in innovative ways; ality and vulnerability, sounding as they whether these or grand, popular “shows” do like his own father’s doomed procla- such as Medea and Macbeth that are mations of peace from earlier on. These solidly done without being particularly brief ﬂashes of ingenuity were few and interesting indicate the next wave of far between, and despite a decent sense Next Wave is yet to be seen. But based of pacing that belied the three-hour on these productions, it seems hard to running time, the production simply distinguish anything other than literal lacked real punch. With the exception distance between 48th Street in Man- of Naomasa Musaka, who as Banquo hattan and Fort Greene in Brooklyn.

BRIAN WALSH teaches in the English Department at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick.

WALSH / Murder by Timidity ᭿ 87

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028103321781592 by guest on 24 September 2021