The past week has been full of live arts performances for me, from the New York Philharmonic (in Avery Fisher Hall) and the Vienna Philharmonic (at Carnegie Hall) in New York City, to "A View from the Bridge" at De Sales University and "33 Variations" at the Allentown Civic Theater in the Lehigh Valley. I really like theater - the French don't have the passion for Broadway musicals that Americans have, so when I was in Paris I was used to seeing a lot of plays, and it has always disappointed me that the US don't have such a deeply ingrained tradition of no-frills stage theater, as opposed to the big hoopla of musicals.
Thankfully I have been able to attend a number of high-quality plays both at Lehigh University (by students) and at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, held every summer at De Sales. This week I decided to do something new, not once but twice: (1) I decided to see a student production at De Sales, which is renowned for its theater program (the PA Shakespeare Festival does employ some De Sales theater majors but it also features many professional actors in the main roles) and (2) I convinced myself that I could drive all the way to Allentown (gasp), all this to give the Civic Theater a try, although it is a community theater so I didn't know whether it would be worth the trek or not.
(As a side note, it is a shame that the shops that are closed on Sundays don't let the Civic Theater use their lots. The Wells Fargo lot had filled up by the time I got there, and there were so many lots in the neighborhood that were completely empty because the businesses were closed on Sundays or were boarded up, but the signs were very clear that I'd be towed if I dared park there, and I couldn't help but imagine nasty tow-truck drivers lurking behind the trees. So yes, I parked on the street! Yay me! It helped that I picked a spot where I didn't have to parallel park.
As a further side note, the drive started well - I had taken Susquehanna Street before - but it ended up being an adventure because one of the streets in Allentown that my GPS wanted me to take became one-way after a stop sign, and not in the direction I wanted to take; thankfully I realized it when I reached the intersection and just turned at the crossroad without going the wrong way down that other street, but I ended up seeing parts of Allentown that I don't think my GPS had planned for me. And boy, was I glad it wasn't icy! Allentown is hilly! Some of the streets looked like epic roller-coasters!)
A View from the Bridge
Anyway, on with the reviews. "A View from the Bridge" by Arthur Miller was phenomenal. The run ended yesterday Sunday, but I hope you were able to catch it. The play [spoiler alert!] is about a longshoreman, Eddie, who isn't able to accept that his niece Catherine has grown up and, when she falls in love with an illegal immigrant from Italy living in the house, denounces him to the immigration services, along with his (also illegal) cousin, who swears vengeance and ultimately kills Eddie in a fight.
It resembles a Greek tragedy in its structure and plot, with a lawyer serving here as the narrator. The actors, all students, shone on stage; the set was beautifully designed with great transitions from the street scenes to the inside ones through a clever use of lighting, as well as movable outside walls for the house. The costumes were also outstanding - the ensemble cast truly seemed to have stepped from the Brooklyn of the early 1950s. I simply couldn't find any flaw with this production. What an outstanding job from the De Sales team!
33 Variations
The second play I saw is "33 Variations" by Moises Kaufman, which opened in 2009 in New York City with Jane Fonda in the main role of a musicologist stricken by ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), racing against time to finish a monograph on Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. I had heard about the play back then but hadn't had a chance to see it; given my love of classical music in general and Beethoven in particular (or should I say: both Beethoven and piano?), it should come as no surprise that I braved the Allentown roads to catch it. It runs at the Civic until Saturday, March 10.
I liked the play. It didn't move me the way "A View from the Bridge" did and it wasn't spectacular, but it was good. The musicologist leaves for Bonn to study Beethoven's sketches of the Diabelli variations in the archives. She has a fraught relationship with her daughter Clara, who ultimately joins her in Bonn with her boyfriend Mike - Mike being also Katherine's male nurse - and develops a friendship with Gertie, the librarian of the Beethoven archives.
The scenes set in the present day alternate with scenes showing Beethoven, Diabelli (who commissioned what was supposed at first to be only one variation) and Beethoven's assistant Schindler, a bland figure in the play who in reality is said to have falsified entries in Beethoven's conversation books and overall misguided scholars for centuries - see for instance this page and the Great Courses lectures on Beethoven's concertos.
The play does make a mention of the difficulty in trusting Schindler when Katherine - this is her big discovery as a scholar - announces to Gertie that the world only thinks that Beethoven first disliked Diabelli's waltz because Schindler says so in his biography, but Schindler was not yet in Beethoven's employ when this happened and so wouldn't have known this first-hand. But the play isn't as much about Beethoven as it is about Katherine, her relationships with the people she loves and her determination to pursue her dreams in spite of ALS, which parallels Beethoven's as he was going deaf and later nearing death.
The play itself would have benefited a few times from more-tightly-edited dialogue, although that is certainly not the Civic Theater's fault. (Do you know this advice veteran journalists give to newbies, which is to write a draft and then cut the last sentence, because usually that last sentence weakens the effect? Well, a few scenes of the play had the last sentence in, so to speak. Also, the part where Gertie suggests to Clara that her mother needs a "male friend", and not for platonic friendship, would have been better cut, since it is not used later in the play and doesn't make the plot advance in any way.)
The actors were very good, especially the women playing Katherine, Clara and Gertie, as well as the man playing Mike. "Katherine" in particular has a lot of acting credits in her bio and was just as good as any actress I have ever seen. (Random facts: (1) in an odd moment of synchronicity, the program states that "Katherine"'s cousin died of ALS in January, (2) I felt I had seen the very talented woman playing Clara before but couldn't place her, until I read the program notes during intermission and learned from her bio she works at Bolete - I am positive she was on the waitressing staff the one time I went there back in December, I always enjoy meeting people who aspire to more in life than what they have and do the work to make it happen; and (3) the actor playing Mike is a PhD student in special education at Lehigh.)
I wasn't quite as impressed with the actors playing Schindler, Diabelli and in particular Beethoven - I thought the rendition of him bordered on the caricature, although the other two came close as well. This play is not a comedy. Beethoven was a genius and a curmudgeon devoted to his art. I wish this had come through more in the actor's playing. (Random fact #4: the teenage son of the actor playing Diabelli worked as assistant stage manager for the play. What better way to make your child develop a love for the theater than to feature in a production with him? I loved that detail.)
I very much disliked the wall part of the set design, which was horrible, just horrible, with pages of the Diabelli scores plastered all over. (You can see a picture here.) That was too cluttered, and there was no contrast whatsoever in the walls - always the same pale background that the actors faded into. I read in one of the reviews that it was supposed to look like a cave and give a claustrophobic impression, but I didn't feel claustrophobic at all, only disappointed that the enormous ugliness of the set was distracting from the action on stage.
The set was well done, though, with movable parts that allowed for fluid transitions from the "now" scenes to the "Beethoven" scenes and a good use of the projector for additional pictures. Something with a cleaner look, such as monochromatic walls with parts of the Diabelli score stenciled on them (maybe even adding more as the play progresses, since Beethoven keeps adding variations) would have served the play better.
I did enjoy the use of the recorded music a lot. This other article mentions that the 2009 Broadway production had a real pianist on stage playing all 33 Diabelli variations, which the Civic Theater couldn't afford - ultimately a blessing according to the Civic's artistic director because he deemed the presence of that pianist very distracting. I didn't see the 2009 version so I can't compare the two, but I suspect he is right - the play is already complex enough.
Overall it was a good play with talented actors in a nice, comfortable theater - and all this for only $26 (ticket price at the student De Sales production was $20.) In contrast with the De Sales play, which benefited from a strong contingent of students cheering for their friends, the theater wasn't anywhere close to sold out, but "33 Variations" was well-attended and deservedly so. I will definitely attend the next production at the Civic: "Grey Gardens". But first I will listen to my Maurizio Pollini recording of the Diabelli Variations and daydream about what I have learned.
