Stalin for Time
Review of
"The Death of Meyerhold"
by
Dorothy Chansky
Closed February 13
Studio Theatre
1501 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202)332-3300 or www.studiotheatre.org
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| Joel Reuben Ganz as Vsevolod Meyerhold and Richard Henrich as Lunacharsky. Left to Right Back: Peter Klaus, Jon Townson and Andrew Greenleaf as Red Army soldiers in "The Death of Meyerhold." |
The play is really the life of Meyerhold, and it was quite a life. Known to theatre historians as the father of an acting technique called biomechanics, Vsevelod Meyerhold (1874-1940) was cursed with living in interesting times. He trained with Stanislavski and strained against Stalin. Stanislavski, to whom most of western culture is indebted for the sort of acting in which psychological depth and interiority ("believability") are privileged, represented the aesthetic against which Meyerhold rebelled. Stalin, who eventually had Meyerhold executed, erected a political world whose realpolitik was at odds with its putative ideals. Meyerhold embraced the revolution and thumbed his nose at the hypocrisy. The rest is, well, theatre history.
Jackson's text wants to be epic, and in many ways it succeeds. A series of scenes announced by projected words (the debts to Brecht are numerous) covers forty years, two continents, a revolution, the Depression, and appearances by Chekhov, Shostakovich, Stella Adler, Clifford Odets, and a half dozen other key players in the arts and politics of the interwar years. The Secondstage actors are energetic, and a platform erected at the back of the playing area mimics the one famously used by the actual Meyerhold to craft productions in which athletic and abstract body work conveyed meaning as much as did the texts of any of the plays he directed.
Director Rick Simas was unable, however, to overcome the problem of a play that is not entirely sure what it wants to be. Most of the scenes were directed as "Stanislavskian" realism, but the script traffics in placards and platitudes throughout its showdowns and tête-à-têtes. (Samples: "When even Utopia is stained, where do we find our hope?" Or "Give me life or death, only not sleep!") Playing this sort of thing as realism didn't quite come off, but going for expressionism or something else non-mimetic didn't seem to be on the company's agenda. The varying levels of experience and skill in the acting company also contributed to the problem of creating an original, multi-faceted style, which is, I think, what was being attempted.
One path too infrequently taken was the embrace of Meyerhold's own biomechanics. Simas staged samples and snippets mostly by way of illustrating moments, but only rarely did the use of physical gesture become the primary language of the production. One successful instance had Shostakovich (Scott Kerns), a shy and not very communicative type, escaping from an uncomfortable conversation by jumping out of the "room" and climbing down the scaffolding. That sort of surprising and central-to-the-action physicality was rarely present. Likewise, Meyerhold himself (played by Joel Ruben Ganz intelligently and vigorously, although occasionally too bombastically) explains his frustration early in the play by suddenly turning to the audience to announce the absurdity of failing to include them/us in every element of the production. The fourth wall was, unfortunately, immediately re-erected.
At close to three hours, this production was never boring, but it too rarely ignited or surprised. More biomechanical art with less didactic verbal matter was what I wanted, but the play is sufficiently rich in possibility that I would be eager to see another production. Jackson's prologue makes it clear that spying and punishment in the name of the "people" is an American as much as a Soviet concern and the play is an invitation to consider our own homeland security and its P.R. machine in light of historical precedent.[Chansky]
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