Brecht versus the Opera: Good Person of Szechwan and Rigoletto

brecht-465.jpg

by Dan Venning

**

Good Person of Szechwan. By Bertolt Brecht. Translation by John Willett. The Foundry Theatre. Directed by Lear Debessonet. At La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, February 16, 2013.

Rigoletto. By Giuseppe Verdi. Conducted by Michele Mariotti. Directed by Michael Mayer. At the Metropolitan Opera. February 19, 2013.

**

Bertolt Brecht is one of the most noteworthy theorists and practitioners of the theatre in the twentieth century. The Marxist playwright and director believed that theatre should not just entertain, but also must move audiences to social action. To this end, he developed what he called “Alienation Effects”—dramatic devices that constantly remind audiences that they are not watching real events, but instead a dramatic recreation of those events. By constantly reminding audiences that they were watching a play, Brecht hoped that he could force his audiences to stop from becoming emotionally invested in what was happening, instead leading them to think about what was being represented and inquire about why or how it was happening, or how the situation might be changed. Brecht called his theatre the “Epic Theatre,” using Aristotelian terms to align his style of theatre more with narrated stories (“epics”) than with dramatic, representational theatre.

Brecht felt that the most nefarious sort of dramatic theatre was the opera. He referred to it as “culinary theatre,” a mix of all sorts of artistic ingredients (music, dance, opulent costumes and sets, melodramatic emotional stories) that was designed to be served up, like a rich soup, to an audience that would leave the theatre emotionally narcotized and drained of any desire for social action. In his youth, Brecht had entertained an obsession with opera, especially Wagner, and his Epic Theatre was a direct reaction against the style he had once loved.

It is interesting, then, to compare one of Brecht’s plays, Good Person of Szechwan, staged by the Foundry Theatre in an extremely Brechtian style at the off-off-Broadway La MaMa, with the widely advertised new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera, directed by Broadway veteran Michael Mayer. After all, it allows one to consider Brecht’s theories while comparing and contrasting productions at theatrical institutions that could not be more different.

**

The Foundry Theatre’s production of Good Person of Szechwan, directed by Lear deBessonet and starring the Obie-award winning performance artist Taylor Mac, wonderfully illustrates the theatrical effectiveness of Brecht’s techniques. Clint Ramos’s flamboyant costumes coupled with Dave Bova’s clown-like makeup and wigs create characters that were overtly theatrical without becoming ridiculous. Matt Saunders’s set imagined Szechwan as a miniature city—created out of tiny, cardboard-box houses—on a hill of risers;  the characters who towered over this city became archetypal figures in a way that would have delighted Brecht. These theatricalizing effects were heightened by the indie rock music of César Alvarez and the Lisps, who were positioned at the top of the set. (Although Brecht disparaged opera, his plays, including Good Person, frequently include non-diegetic music and songs; he felt that interpolating songs into spoken drama was one way of “alienating” the audience by reminding them that the play is not a representation of reality.) Even the program was written to highlight Brecht’s techniques and their Marxist ends: the program contained a section, labeled “The Truth is Concrete,” that listed the many varied production costs for Good Person, which totaled $203,815. But the most significant Brechtian theatrical effect in deBessonet’s production came from the casting of Taylor Mac in the central role of Shen Ti/Shui Ta.

The central character in Good Person is Shen Ti, a prostitute (the play is sometimes translated as The Good Woman of Szechwan). At the beginning of the play, a water-seller named Wang (David Turner) recognizes three gods, disguised as mortals (Vinie Burrows, Annie Golden, and Mia Katigbak) visiting the city in search of good, moral people. Wang promises to find the gods a place to stay, but the only person willing to put them up for the night is Shen Ti. The gods reward Shen Ti for passing this test of goodness with a modest fortune that she uses to purchase a tobacco shop. Immediately Shen Ti is besieged by freeloading parasites who seek to abuse her goodness: the former owner of the shop, a homeless family, and an aspiring pilot, Yang Sun (Clifton Duncan) who wants to marry Shen Ti for her fortune. In order to ward off these sponges, Shen Ti invents a heartless pragmatist male cousin named Shui Ta. Disguising herself as Shui Ta, she averts financial disaster and  turns her modest business into a thriving tobacco factory. But at the end of the play Shui Ta is called to trial by the gods, since the citizens believe Shui Ta may have done away with his good cousin. When the gods discover that Shen Ti and Shui Ta are one and the same, they are bewildered and the play ends without resolution as Shen Ti calls to the audience for help—it is impossible, she cries, to be good and to survive in the world.

Brecht would have been delighted by the casting of Mac in the role of Shen Ti/Shui Ta because this casting highlights the theatricality of the dual role. Mac’s other performances often involve drag, but while in this production Ramos’s costumes did not attempt to hide Mac’s masculine sex,  his characterization of Shen Ti not ridiculous. She was a deeply sympathetic figure trapped at the heart of this corrupt society, trying to survive as best as possible. Shui Ta, on the other hand, was a campy and silly parody of the ruthless, pinstriped-suited businessman, with his bowler hat and slightly-askew moustache. Mac’s gender-bending performance was nothing short of a tour de force, especially in his songs. His raw voice, combined with the rock score, clearly conveyed the anger and pain Shen Ti felt at being trapped in her situation. Mac is a revelation to watch and listen to, and has already become a star of the downtown theatrical scene, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he soon reaches a much broader audience.

Mac’s performance was the highlight of a production that was, on the whole, superb. While Mac’s performance was virtuosic, many other cast members stood out as well—Turner was excellent as Wang, projecting the desperation of the poor everyman, Duncan was both charismatic and slimy as the gold-digging Yang Sun, and the playwright Lisa Kron gave a hilarious turn as his mother, Mrs. Yang. Throughout the production, deBessonet’s imagination was always on display. When the gods  depart behind an upstage scrim at the end of the show and their silhouettes vanish, this is not a happy ending: although Shen Ti/Shui Ta has been forgiven, deBessonet’s production makes it clear that nothing will get better for Shen Ti without systematic changes to the society in which she lives. As Brecht would have hoped, I left the theatre not narcotized but energized by its marvelous theatricality, continuing to mull over Shen Ti’s unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, situation.

**

Mayer’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto for the Metropolitan Opera has been widely advertised across Manhattan. Posters and billboards display a brooding Željko Lučić in modern dress as the title role in Verdi’s tragic opera. Meyer has moved the action from sixteenth-century Mantua to Las Vegas in the 1960s; the lascivious Duke of Mantua (Piotr Beczala) has become the playboy owner of The Duke’s Casino; and Rigoletto (Lučić ) is now not a hunchbacked clown but an aging, abrasive comedian in the Vegas scene—a tenor-voiced Don Rickles-esque type.

This ostentatious directorial concept works well with the story of Rigoletto. Adapted from Victor Hugo’s scandalous play Le Roi s’amuse (The King Amuses Himself), Rigoletto tells the story of a lascivious Duke who spends his time carousing and seducing women. His favorite sycophant is his clown Rigoletto, whose primary job is to make fun of men whose wives or daughters are seduced by the Duke. Early in the opera, Rigoletto is cursed by one such man, Monterone (Robert Pomakov, in Mayer’s production styled as a wealthy Arab sheik). Rigoletto in turn hides his beloved daughter, Gilda (Diana Damrau) both from the lust of the Duke and the ire of the other courtiers, who all hate Rigoletto for his barbed wit. Unbeknownst to Rigoletto, Gilda has already met and fallen in love with the Duke, thinking he is only a poor student, and the courtiers have discovered her existence. They kidnap her and deliver her to the Duke’s apartment, and all Rigoletto can do is rant and rave while the Duke has his way with her. Gilda emerges traumatized but still in love with the Duke; nevertheless Rigoletto hires the assassin Sparafucile (Štefan Kocán) to kill the Duke. Sparafucile’s sister, Maddalena (Oksana Volkova), who has also been seduced by the Duke, persuades Sparafucile to spare the Duke if another body can be found to be delivered to Rigoletto in place of the Duke. Learning of this, Gilda sacrifices herself. Rigoletto realizes he has been duped and discovers his dying daughter; as she begs for his blessing, he can think only of how he was cursed.

Rigoletto tells a profoundly unpleasant story in which evil begets evil and the innocent Gilda is the only central character who ends up dead. The story is made all the more unsettling by the fact that the heartless Duke, who sees women as nothing more than toys, is written for an angelic tenor voice (it is the Duke who sings the famous aria “La Donna è Mobile,” or “Woman is Fickle,” a starkly ironic song since it is the Duke who is inconstant). The plot seems tailor made for 1960s Las Vegas where cash is king and sex is inescapable. Christine Jones’s sets and Susan Hilferty’s costumes opulently display the vapid wealth of this society, particularly in the first two acts, set in the colorful environment of the casino. Yet it is the third act, set at Sparafucile’s seedy strip club on the outskirts of Las Vegas, in which Jones creates the most striking stage images: an old car stage right, a club with a stripper pole, neon in the distance: these effectively convey the desolation and desperation into which Rigoletto has sunk and make for the opera’s most successful moments.

Despite the sets, costumes, and performances (the singing was magnificent), the stage seems massively under-utilized for much of the show, particularly in the first two acts. The central characters act almost exclusively on the forestage, totally ignoring many wonderful spaces created by Jones. Steven Hoggett is credited as choreographer, and I am a fan of his work (his Black Watch and Beautiful Burnout were extraordinary pieces of movement-based theatre), but there is little dance or movement in the show beyond the third act, when the Duke cavorts playfully on the stripper pole. Despite the wonderful concept visible in the sets and costumes, Mayer does not stage the opera in a way that makes effective use of the tremendous resources of the Met. This is surprising since Mayer is known for his innovative work as a Broadway director of hits such as Thoroughly Modern Millie, American Idiot, and Spring Awakening, for which he won a Tony Award. The opera and Mayer’s staging, particularly in the first two acts, were disconnected.   Mayer’s show, despite its glamorous concept, ultimately didn’t say anything particularly new or invigorating about the events depicted. Rigoletto has the potential to be a highly political show; Mayer’s staging, when it worked, was merely pretty.

I was moved by Rigoletto, and the individual elements were all fantastic—Michele Mariotti’s conducting of Verdi’s music, the singing, sets, costume, lighting, and the story. This is unsurprising considering the resources of the Met. But ultimately the various elements of the production didn’t come together. In a case of form reflecting content, like the ’60s Vegas depicted in Meyer’s production, his Rigoletto was all glitz and glamor, without any honest core.

**

Although the two are only about three-and-a-half miles apart as the crow flies, there could hardly be more theatrical distance between the off-off-Broadway aesthetics of La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre on East 4th Street and the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. To some degree, the opulence of the Met’s production of Rigoletto confirmed Brecht’s criticisms of the opera. The music was beautiful and the sets, costumes, and entire experience of sitting in the grand auditorium of the Met displayed the emotional power of representational theatre. But the Met’s production paled in comparison to the vitality of Good Person of Szechwan at La MaMa.

That said, one good production of a Brecht play and one ultimately unsatisfying production at the Met do not fully confirm Brecht’s theories. I’ve seen plenty of melodramatic and poorly-directed Brecht plays, and some quite good operas (I’m hoping to return to the Met to see the new productions of Wagner’s Parsifal or Handel’s Giulio Caesere this season). Neither the opera nor the dramatic theatre is by definition narcotizing—although bad theatre certainly has that effect. Additionally, Brecht was more than a bit disingenuous in his disparagement of the opera. For all his focus on making the audience think and spurring them to action, when Brecht’s work is done well—as Good Person was by the Foundry—his stories, his characters, his songs, and his plays are, in the very best sense of the word, operatic.

**

Good Person of Szechwan. By Bertolt Brecht. Translation by John Willett. The Foundry Theatre. Directed by Lear deBessonet. Music by César Alvarez with The Lisps. Music direction by César Alvarez. Choreography by Danny Mefford. Dramaturgy by Anne Erbe. Set by Matt Saunders. Costumes by Clint Ramos. Lighting by Tyler Micoleau. Sound by Brandon Wolcott. Properties by Ricola Wille. Stage management by Megan Schwarz Dickert. Featuring: Vinie Burrows, Kate Benson, Ephraim Birney, Clifton Duncan, Annie Golden, Jack Allen Greenfield, Brooke Ishibashi, Paul Juhn, Mia Katigbak, Lisa Kron, Taylor Mac, David Tuner, and Darryl Winslow. At La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, February 1–24, 2013. Tickets: $30–35.

Rigoletto. Music by Giuseppe Verdi. Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Le Roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo. Conducted by Michele Mariotti. Stage direction by Michael Mayer. Set by Christine Jones. Costumes by Susan Hilferty. Lighting by Kevin Adams. Choreography by Steven Hoggett. Featuring: Piotr Beczala, Catherine Choi, David Crawford, Diana Damrau, Štefan Kocán, Alexander Lewis, Željko Lučić, Jeff Mattsey, Robert Pomakov, Earle Patriarco, Oksana Volkova, and Maria Zifchak. At the Metropolitan Opera. January 28–May 1, 2013 (April and May performances with new cast). Tickets $17–450.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 OpenCUNY » login | join | terms | activity 

 Supported by the CUNY Doctoral Students Council.  

OpenCUNY.ORGLike @OpenCUNYLike OpenCUNY