Tynan's Anger

(This review was originally published at Blogcritics.org)

When I sat down at to watch The Pleasures of Peace at the Medicine Show Theatre, I saw immediately a perfect litmus test for the success of the show. Sitting to my right was a group of classic contemporary NYU hipsters, drinking Heineken and discussing celebrity gossip. The success of the show depended on how well it got under the skin of exactly these kind of people.

A revue like The Pleasures of Peace, which takes its title from a poem by Kenneth Koch, is exactly the type of show we should be seeing more of in the English-speaking world, and especially in the U.S. If I had one major objection, it would be that I wanted the show to be larger, and with a larger audience. The Medicine Show Ensemble has carved a niche for itself with shows like this, and while the current show is slightly too long and somewhat uneven (the plight of any revue, good or bad), it was obvious that this diverse, creative ensemble had the intellect to match their inventiveness.

Some skits focused on the dichotomy of political and banal conversation. One routine featured the best theatrical expression I've ever seen of the conflict between classical sincerity and postmodernist apathy: a humming battle between Beethoven's 9th and a lullaby, with the song meant to put you to sleep eventually winning—and sounding very dangerous.

There's a lot of joke telling, mostly of the type of jokes people have all heard but would never tell in such a public forum. There's an Oscar Wilde scene on the morality of the wealthy, which is promptly destroyed by intentionally shit analysis meant to mock the audience. But throughout the show, there's an overwhelming commitment to creativity and attacking complacency. Like all smart theater, the ensemble puts the art before the politics. There's certainly a fair share of leftist rhetoric, but it's mostly either secondhand or treated with a sense of humor.

Of course, if I was totally happy with a challenging show, that would mean I wasn't really challenged that much after all. The Medicine Show Ensemble had that covered by delving into that most verboten of theatrical practices: boring your audience. Nearly an hour after mentioning how boring opera was, the show launched into a sarcastically boring opera based on a Louisa May Alcott story about a subject that's usually anything but boring to young people: hashish. I don't know if it was worth it to bore an audience to make a point—I'm leaning towards no—but I at least appreciate the ensemble's willingness to try. I just hope that they were aware of the boring factor.

There are inevitable limits to the revue format, especially to a contemporary eye. The biggest misstep, which was more a product of the format than the content, was the inclusion of John Gruen's one-act play Guards in Love. While the play, about a love affair between a British royal guard and a Swiss Vatican guard, was not that bad at all, it probably had more of a place downstairs as part of the Ensemble Studio Theatre's one-act marathon, especially considering it didn't add all that much to the theme of the evening. Still, considering the amount of material packed into the night, keeping it to around two hours was an impressive feat.

Perhaps a show this experimental or eclectic can't be expected to pack houses, even in an Off-Off-Broadway production. I'm sure the ensemble members wouldn't have it any other way (except maybe with a bigger paycheck). Yet theater like this is too smart to be left to the fringes, and I wish it could run longer so that critics and crowds would be more likely to take a gander. As for those NYU kids, despite the show being quite funny, if on its own plane, they almost never laughed, and spent the second half of the night whispering to each other in confusion and looking to the door. Brecht would have been proud.

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Through June 28. Located at the Medicine Show Theatre Ensemble, 249 W. 52nd St (3rd Floor). Tickets can be purchased at the box office or online at Smarttix. Photo credits: John Quilty

Directed by Barbara Vann. Pleasures Of Peace features Molly C. Blau, Paul Cloeter, Mark J. Dempsey, Felix Gardon, Jason Alan Griffin, Beth Griffith, Ashley Anne Harrell, Nina Karacosta, Ward Nixon, Andrei Robakov, Peter Tedeschi, Alex Martinez Wallace and Ann Marie Yoo.

Labels: brecht, medicine show theatre ensemble, new york, off-off-Broadway, the pleasures of peace, theater review

Nick Cohen had a deeply challenging proclamation against Brecht's role in the current theatrical world in today's London Observer (the paper, that, of course, made famous this blog's Brecht-loving Marxist namesake). He raises some very valid criticisms, including Brecht's complacency in Stalinism, wavering opposition to fascism, and most importantly, the inescapable influence of politics in his dramatic theory. Cohen depicts Brecht as complicit in Communist genocide in both Russia and China, and places the blame squarely on modern audiences for overlooking that side of Brecht.

It's a fair argument, but I would contend that Cohen misjudges Brecht's role in contemporary theater as still being absolute acceptance. Yes, Brecht's plays are still being frequently revived, and his dramatic theory is still one of the dominant dramatic theories of our time. But it is not the only theory of our time, as those who think seriously about politics and theater do take into account the totalitarian side of his politics.

For me, the key to Brecht in an unabashedly capitalist society is more his view of the alienation effect than his socioeconomic theory. More than anything else, Brecht's main opponent was complacency, his hatred of what he called "culinary" theatre whose ideology was loose, floozy life maxims over directed social points. What Brecht wanted was to get people out of their comfort zones, to make them think about an issue in a new way, to change minds more than society. True, he saw this as a necessary product of a larger Communist revolution, but by no means do we have to take everything he says verbatim.

Part of the problem has been the modern interpretation of Brecht primarily as a style--in dramatic structure, dialog, costume, etc.--as opposed his general intellectual approach to theater. Audiences expecting a "Brechtian kind of play" are suffering from the exact same complacency that Brecht tried to abolish. In reality, he touched upon a universal ability of theater to make us think and to influence the audience member's mind. This side of theater has been prominent in just about every dramatic theory, including the fascist-sympathizing Italian Futurists, who had the polar opposite of Brecht's politics. The fight against complacency has been Brecht's most enduring influence, and you can see traces of it through the Angry Young Man, the punks, the hoodies, and just about any other incendiary form of entertainment. I say this as complete devotee to capitalism.

Labels: brecht, nick cohen, observer, theory

Yesterday I performed a sort of Brechtian exercise, the cultural equivalent of traveling from the beaches of southern France to a concentration camp. After seeing The Trip to Bountiful at the Goodman, a pleasant if rather bland play, I went to see one of the more jarring American movies of the past 3 years, Michael Haneke's Funny Games. Those who know me shouldn't be too surprised that I found the latter experience more worthwhile.

The Trip to Bountiful can be seen as pretty much the polar opposite of the Goodman's King Lear of a couple of years ago, a production that incidentally had a lot in common with Funny Games. While that King Lear was a challenging, thoroughly draining experience that no doubt angered some of the Goodman's more conservative subscribers, The Trip to Bountiful, as part of the Goodman's year-long Horton Foote series, is a much safer, accessible work for the blue-haired, Tuesdays with Morrie-reading crowd, with just enough literary significance to satisfy the culture vultures. Foote is something of a southern answer to Neil Simon, a populist playwright who is delicate enough to gain minor dramatic significance with a much more significant dent at the box office. Foote's relationship to Simon can be seen as a sort of parallel to Tennessee Williams' relationship to Arthur Miller.

That makes him ideal for a season-long series at one of the more prominent theater companies in the Midwest, but it also results in a less challenging show than we've seen from the Goodman of late. It doesn't help that The Trip to Bountiful, even as one of Foote's more recognized plays, is rather dull and dated (I also made the mistake of seeing it in a Saturday matinee, complete with elderly who don't seem to realize that you have to be quiet when actors are speaking). It's a play about an old lady rediscovering her country roots while escaping from the hustle and bustle of city life, a theme that was perhaps less played out in 1953 than in 2008. With a few notable exceptions (Lois Smith as the lead Carrie Watts has truly made the role her own), the performances are rather lackluster as well. The only other standout element of the show, David Cosler's excellent set design, is marred by transitions that tended to be extremely awkward. It's not a particularly bad show, it's just rather insubstantial, and it unfortunately casts doubt onto whether Foote needed a season-long tribute.

The audience interested in Bountiful is the opposite of those who would be interested in Funny Games, a shot-for-shot remake of Michael Haneke's 1997 film by the director himself, this time with a fully Americanized production. I have not seen the original, but based on chronology alone, the critique of American film violence poised by Funny Games has only become more relevant with the rise of the Saw/Hostel-style torture porn. Few films intrigued me more going into early 2008, and the initial critical response, as expected, was strongly divided. Few disagreed on the film's intentions, an exercise in draining all the entertainment from film violence and putting the onus directly on the audience as to whether to make it through the whole film. What has been heavily debated is whether the film successfully executes its premise, or whether it engages in the kind of sadism it intends to criticize.

Based on some of the negative reviews I read, I expected a lot more gore and violence than was actually in the film. Most of the violence is off-screen, and while there's certainly blood, stabbings and gunshots, there's no moments where the violence itself actually makes you cringe. While the film is certainly sadistic, I find the lack of gore to be the main reason why the sadism works for its intended purposes. It doesn't let violence be a thrill on its own, and focuses mainly on the repercussions of violence. The film is about 60% of Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and Devon Gearhart crying and desperately, pathetically trying to find a way out of the situation. And unlike in Saw and Hostel, the film makes no argument for such a thing being entertaining. In the end, we're not rooting for the family to live, as Michael Pitt's torturous Paul poses to the audience early on, but we're rooting for them to die, quickly and painlessly, so we can get out of the theater and get as far away from this film as possible.

A key addition to this version of the film is an extension of the critique to our casual love of cinematic sexuality. There's a particularly disturbing seen in which Naomi Watts has to strip in front of her torturers, and she spends a significant portion of the film in her panties. In terms of performances, no one acts trauma quite like Watts (Estelle Parsons' Oscar-winning turn in Bonnie and Clyde seems childish by comparison), and Tim Roth, while somewhat underutilized, still performs excellently as the sad-sack "pussy husband."

I'm not surprised at all that the film has been a box office failure so far, and I'd actually be quite concerned if it was a hit. But by making American film audiences address their love of violence in a form as distorted as Funny Games, Haneke has without a doubt created the most important film so far in 2008, a film that's essential viewing for anyone with a stance on modern film violence, pro or con.

Relevant Links:
-For an excellent article on Naomi Watt's take on Funny Games, here's an interview with the London Times
-Pat Graham at the Reader's movie blog makes an excellent, and dead-on comparison between Funny Games and No Country For Old Men, arguing that Funny Games has the same idea as No Country taken to its natural extreme.

Labels: brecht, funny games, goodman theater, michael haneke, naomi watts, tim roth, trip to bountiful