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magidI went to the HRDC production of Alcestis (Euripides) at the Loeb Ex this weekend. I thought it would be a play. It was, as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queue notes, a ... thing. Performance art is the only category broad enough, really. I should have known from the director's notes in the program:
This prologue that they used as an afterword hadn't been restaged until now, and perhaps that's with good reason. Oh, and "A number of scenes were devloped collaboratively in rehearsal and are the original creations of the actors", as if the rest weren't enough.
So in the end, trying to be all levels of text and very post modern, it's a pastiche of too many different things, and doesn't really work.
First, a plot summary: King Admetus is slated to die. Apollo negotiates with Death, so she should take someone else in his stead. No one agrees to be the substitute, not even his aged parents, until Queen Alcestis volunteers. After she dies, Heracles comes a-visiting, and brings her back from the dead, if she will remain mute for three days. I don't know how Euripides ends the play, though my guess would be that she talks and is lost, and lots of other people die of grief, or something like that. It was impossible to tell from the performance.
To start with, the set. What I noticed first were the branches lined with white xmas lights over the audience seating, which was very pretty. Other than the coolness factor, I never did figure out why that was done. In the stage area, there were a number of different levels, platforms with steps or slopes between them. There were a number of rectangular prisms, some designed to be moved manually, others raised on wires. Actually, there were a lot of things on wires (leading to a lovely sentence in the program: "The hanging light boxes and rocks will fly during the performance."). They hadn't really gotten down moving the prisms that were moved manually, and most of the rest of the flying set was only used once, which seemed a poor design decision.
There was a five-woman Greek chorus in long gowns and feathered bird masks, singing with the accompaniement of a marimba, an oboe, a violin, and a bassoon (though these are all that are credited in the program, there were other small percussion instruments as well). The music was mostly in minor chords, and the musical equivalent of word salad, notes in apparent disjunction with one another. Not to my taste, but it could work, perhaps, if it were only the time necessary between scenes, and if the words were understandable. Unfortunately, they mostly weren't.
There were some good scenes about death and the transitory nature of life, along with the idea of love. And there were some funny parts with Heracles detailing his many Labors. Plus Apollo was beautifully dressed, including golden glitter. 0I kept on being jolted out of the play by the obviously modern dialogue (Euripides never used "nuclear," for instance.), though.
And then the play completely shifted after Alcestis was brought back from the dead. There was an overhead projector off to one side, and Alcestis wrote on it, over and over, the description that was being given in the little puppet show happening in center stage. And then that morphed into an enactment of someone being buried alive, at which point it was declared that there was too much tragedy, and they were done with that. And the actors started playing themselves, rather then Euripides' roles, starting a Q&A session about the play, knitting, making calls on cell phones. Except that Alcestis kept writing frantically on the overhead projector, and would not talk, or come out of character, despite the others' urgings, despite a little dance designed to distract her, despite the comfort the others offered.
And in the end, after two different 'curtain calls' that were nowhere near the end of the performance, the audience stayed seated, still unsure, until the house manager came in and motioned everyone to leave, which is never a good sign.
PS. This is the second play I've been to at the Loeb with something falling on the audience. This time it wasn't air-popped popcorn, but fragments of fabric falling thickly.
queue notes, a ... thing. Performance art is the only category broad enough, really. I should have known from the director's notes in the program:The script used in this performance is an original cut that draws primarily from Ted Hughes' adaptation of the Euripides and from the translation by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. Alcestis and the chorus also speak text drawn from Sylvia Plath's poems. The second act incorporates an experimental text by Heiner Muller, Explosion of a Memory/Description of a Picture, which was written as a prologue to Robert Wilson's 1986 production of Alcestis
This prologue that they used as an afterword hadn't been restaged until now, and perhaps that's with good reason. Oh, and "A number of scenes were devloped collaboratively in rehearsal and are the original creations of the actors", as if the rest weren't enough.
So in the end, trying to be all levels of text and very post modern, it's a pastiche of too many different things, and doesn't really work.
First, a plot summary: King Admetus is slated to die. Apollo negotiates with Death, so she should take someone else in his stead. No one agrees to be the substitute, not even his aged parents, until Queen Alcestis volunteers. After she dies, Heracles comes a-visiting, and brings her back from the dead, if she will remain mute for three days. I don't know how Euripides ends the play, though my guess would be that she talks and is lost, and lots of other people die of grief, or something like that. It was impossible to tell from the performance.
To start with, the set. What I noticed first were the branches lined with white xmas lights over the audience seating, which was very pretty. Other than the coolness factor, I never did figure out why that was done. In the stage area, there were a number of different levels, platforms with steps or slopes between them. There were a number of rectangular prisms, some designed to be moved manually, others raised on wires. Actually, there were a lot of things on wires (leading to a lovely sentence in the program: "The hanging light boxes and rocks will fly during the performance."). They hadn't really gotten down moving the prisms that were moved manually, and most of the rest of the flying set was only used once, which seemed a poor design decision.
There was a five-woman Greek chorus in long gowns and feathered bird masks, singing with the accompaniement of a marimba, an oboe, a violin, and a bassoon (though these are all that are credited in the program, there were other small percussion instruments as well). The music was mostly in minor chords, and the musical equivalent of word salad, notes in apparent disjunction with one another. Not to my taste, but it could work, perhaps, if it were only the time necessary between scenes, and if the words were understandable. Unfortunately, they mostly weren't.
There were some good scenes about death and the transitory nature of life, along with the idea of love. And there were some funny parts with Heracles detailing his many Labors. Plus Apollo was beautifully dressed, including golden glitter. 0I kept on being jolted out of the play by the obviously modern dialogue (Euripides never used "nuclear," for instance.), though.
And then the play completely shifted after Alcestis was brought back from the dead. There was an overhead projector off to one side, and Alcestis wrote on it, over and over, the description that was being given in the little puppet show happening in center stage. And then that morphed into an enactment of someone being buried alive, at which point it was declared that there was too much tragedy, and they were done with that. And the actors started playing themselves, rather then Euripides' roles, starting a Q&A session about the play, knitting, making calls on cell phones. Except that Alcestis kept writing frantically on the overhead projector, and would not talk, or come out of character, despite the others' urgings, despite a little dance designed to distract her, despite the comfort the others offered.
And in the end, after two different 'curtain calls' that were nowhere near the end of the performance, the audience stayed seated, still unsure, until the house manager came in and motioned everyone to leave, which is never a good sign.
PS. This is the second play I've been to at the Loeb with something falling on the audience. This time it wasn't air-popped popcorn, but fragments of fabric falling thickly.
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Date: 2006-01-09 03:02 am (UTC)Alcestis being reunited with the king is actually the end of the play, as written; it's a happy ending. It sounds like this group thought it wasn't quite enough. Meh. I would like to see a straight-up staging of it, someday.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 01:27 pm (UTC)Not a tragedy, huh? They did a great job of glossing that over.
I agree, I'd like to see a straight-up staging, whether with a traditional translation or the Ted Hughes version.