By the time Voltaire got around to writing Candide, he had been kicked out of Paris a couple of times for his outspoken work. The 1759 book, whose subtitle was “or Optimism,” earned him the enmity of the government and religious leaders alike, as well as lasting fame.
The latest variation on Candide aims to be just as brash and scathing as the original, in which all manner of misfortune makes the title character’s cheery outlook look more and more absurd.
Such is the focus of Washington’s Spooky Action Theater’s delightful adaptation that it has inverted the original title as Optimism! Or: Voltaire’s Candide.
Candide was originally written following some immense calamities, from the Seven Years’ War to a 1755 earthquake and tsunami in Lisbon that destroyed the city and killed up to 100,000 people. Following all of that, the idea of “all is for the best” seems ludicrous, or at least ripe for satire.
So, then, is the current version, coming at a time of its own calamities, following the 30 chapters of Candide’s travels in a hyper-condensed, hyper-active presentation that uses every inch of the basement theater of the Universalist National Memorial Church.
As the play begins, a series of two-foot letters cut in Styrofoam scatter around the perimeter of the theater in the round, and in the four banks of seats the cast of nine eventually make their way. Soon, the characters jump from their chairs, grab letters and re-arrange them to the motto of the day: THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS before the series of unfortunate incidents begins to undermine the notion.
Fresh-faced Ryan Alan Jones portrays young Candide, who takes absolutely seriously the optimistic teachings of his philosophy teacher Pangloss (Michael Kevin Darnall). He’ll need it as he slams into all kinds of adversity – falling in love with a beauty named Cunegonde, and getting immediately banished for it; being abducted, lashed, and inducted into an army by the Bulgars.
That only begins a journey to Lisbon, Buenos Aires, El Dorado, Surinam, and Turkey in travels that inevitably bring death, disaster, riches, ruin, and torture amid scores of characters. Still, Candide is bent on keeping a smile and holding hope he’ll find his original love, whom he heard has been raped and disemboweled, and survived, but turned ugly.
Eventually there is a reunion of many of the main figures and a turn toward true happiness that involves a little more practicality and still rings true for the 21st century.
The long journey is kept light, however, by the marvelous adaptation by T.J. Edwards, who rewrites everything in witty, modernized couplets that rejects out of hand the musical version ofCandide that had previously been a hit. Basing his version on Richard Aldington’s 1928 translation, he layers on the rhymes that alternately induce delight and groans, with internal rhymes that whatever the success have to be admired. Like the most nimble wordplay in hip-hop, it’s an accomplishment that doesn’t fail to entertain, and the beauty of an in-the-round presentation is that you can see the smiles on the rest of the audience as it goes along as well.
But the Spooky Action production directed by Michael Chamberlin is more than in-the-round, it’s 360 degrees in every direction, with actors diving from dumbwaiter doors, popping out through projection room holes, jumping from chairs and scuffling on the floor, painted in the blues of the ocean or earth’s cosmos.
It wouldn’t work without a top notch cast game for such action, and this production has one. Besides Jones, the only other character to play just one role is Patricia Lynn, whose Cunegonde has two personalities after she somehow turns from beauty to monster. Others in the diverse, able ensemble, each with their own highlighted moments include Adeoye, Rosemary Regan, Jessica Shearer, John Tweel, Ryan Tumulty, and Gregory Stuart in addition to Darnall (who may have the coolest credit in the bios: playing Omar’s lover on HBO’s “The Wire”).
The set design by Giorgos Tsappas is nothing if not versatile (with the letters making a key return in the end); it’s highlighted by Brian S. Allard’s light design and Bradley Porter’s sound, with birdcalls even before the action starts. The cardboard cutouts of Deb Crerie’s props lend them a nifty uniformity.
Voltaire’s work has endured because its excesses continue to speak to our times, and the dazzlingly alive Spooky Action Theater production found an exceedingly entertaining way to bring it to life. The company’s name, incidentally, comes from the Einstein term for two particles that can become so related that a change in one brings a change in the other no matter the distance. The theater certainly finds a way to close that distance.
Optimism! Or Voltaire’s Candide runs at the Spooky Action Theater in the Universalist National Memorial Church, 1810 16th St. NW, Washington D.C., through May 19.
Ghost-Writer
In all of the plays and movies about writers, there are usually very few scenes of actual writing being depicted. This may be understandable – the solitary endeavor makes for dull spectator sport. In Michael Hollinger’s play Ghost-Writer, however, currently at Metro Stage in Alexandria, the typewriter is front and center and, at least a portion of the play, is given to the tapping out of pages. In this case, it’s from Myra Babbage, devoted typist of two decades to the novelist Franklin Woolsey.
He waits for words to come; she waits. He dictates, she types. Why he never learned to type himself is a mystery. Perhaps in 1919, when the play is set, that was seen as women’s work, leaving the man to look out the window and pull things from his imagination.
Ghost-Writer is loosely based on Theodora Bosanquet, who was secretary to Henry James from 1907 until his death in 1916. She went on to write her own literary histories after that, but certainly not in the voice of her former employer.
In the case of the fictional Miss Babbage, however, she sits at her Royal with eyes closed, as if in a séance, waiting to hear from beyond her master’s voice (she’s aware of the RCA dog references). Then she begins her clacking.
Her persistence causes some understandable amusement in the press of the day, but more thoughtful questioning is thought to come from the understood receiver of her monologue in the play, perhaps a researcher with deeper intent – or the time-traveling playwright himself!
Though dead, it is understood, Woolsey is still with her. In the production directed by John Vreeke, we can see him standing at the window looking out at the Queensborough Bridge for inspiration as he always did.
His widow Vivian is understandably not that happy about this woman claiming to still hear his voice. After all, not only does she presumably still have to pay for this unnecessary studio where the secretary still comes to work, there is some question whether this woman will exploit her dead husband’s name or otherwise mar his literary standing posthumously with whatever she completes.
Widow Woolsey even threatens to burn the manuscript, which makes me think: why doesn’t Miss Babbage just make a carbon copy of it to prevent such a thing from happening? Then again, I can’t figure out why old Woolsey comes to work, living or dead, in a three-piece suit and a tie as if he’s running a bank instead of an imagination. That was the way with romantic novelists in 1919, I guess.
Writers of a certain age who attend may be delighted to hear the old sounds of typing once more, but those of us who actually used the things will note that the devoted Miss Babbage hardly ever shifts up to capitalize (is she working for e.e. cummings?).
In the end, you realize, she may be typing the same two letters back and forth, over and over, tapping out the repetition like the Jack Nicholson character in The Shining, which made me think: all work and no play makes a dull play.
The Elder Statesman
In its 27 seasons, in its several homes, the literary-minded Washington Stage Guild has become one of the best known purveyors of the work of George Bernard Shaw. Now, it’s become the theatrical authority on the works of T.S. Eliot. Not that the group will stage the Eliot-derived musical Catsanytime soon.
But with the current production of Eliot’s 1958 The Elder Statesman (and the reading of his church pageant The Rock May 6) the WSG will be, by its own estimation, the only theatre company in the world to have staged all of Eliot’s dramas starting with The Cocktail Party in 1996, and continuing with Murder in the Cathedral in 1997, The Confidential Clerk in 1999, and The Family Reunion in 2004 as well as “An Evening of T.S. Eliot’s Poetry” in 1997.
Better known, of course, for devastating poems like “The Hollow Men” and “The Waste Land,” Eliot also turns out to be quite a dramatist, imbuing his work with natural and effective theatrical devices and a wealth of ideas that make his plays compelling half a century after their writing.
The Elder Statesman begins with a young woman and suitor arguing about spending more time together in a relationship obviously overshadowed by the presence of the woman’s father off stage. That prepares the way for the entrance of the formidable Lord Calverton, who has stepped down from the House of Lords and is about to move to elder housing.
Even as we see how he injects himself into their relationship, a knock on the door comes from a mysterious stranger identified as Senior Gomez, who turns out to be an old college friend back when he had a different name — and so did Lord Calverton.
A recent convict, he has some unsavory secrets about the esteemed politician’s past that just might mar his public name as he settles into retirement. At the retirement center, a second figure from his past — an early lover — also surfaces suddenly, reflecting on her suit against him and about to read aloud the love letters she still has with her (well, copies of them; the originals are in her lawyer’s safe).
What’s meant to be a golden time of rest is one now of great irritation and trepidation for the elder statesman, whose public life clashes with his private past. How will this square with his daughter or with his son, who is suddenly back after quitting a job and seeking a new direction?
The Elder Statesman was fittingly Eliot’s final play and, as such, it contemplates end of life issues, as well as looks back at a life’s misdeeds and regrets in hopes of coming to terms with them before death. Director Bill Largess notes that most of Eliot plays were inspired by Greek stories; in this case, it was Oedipus at Colonus in which the blind king comes to term with the fact he may have killed his father. The crime in Statesman is a less extreme, but it does involve hitting a body on the road.
Eliot wrote most of his plays in verse style; and it’s worth seeking out the text to see it laid out on the page. On stage, his works lose their internal rhyme, but there is no doubting the serious consideration given to important issues in surprisingly frank and expressive speeches.
At the same time, there are plenty of moments of humor that never extend to farce.
Astoundingly, this is apparently the first time the work has been staged in D.C., and the success of the WSG production lies in its straightforward presentation of an often brilliant text, and its strong cast.
The striking John Dow is just right as the old man besieged on all sides. If he falters on some of the extensive soliloquies he delivers, it can be attributed to the age of the character more than the extent of his task. Even when not speaking, he conveys a lot in his expression, usually a sour one at the people he has to face.
Kelly Renee Armstrong has a sweet serenity as the supportive daughter. Robert Leembruggen brings a sly and subtle swagger as the scheming Gomez and is quite a presence on the stage. Two women in the second act enliven things considerably — Jewell Robinson as the faded former cabaret star who holds a flame for the esteemed gentleman and Lynn Steinmetz is comic perfection as the meddling proprietor of the elderly housing.
The cast is rounded out by Kevin Hasser as the fiance and wayward son Michael Avolio who both put in solid performances, as well in a production so good you’d wish there was more Eliot they could put on.
Cats, anyone?
Running time: Approximately 2 hours, 30 minutes, including two 10-minute intermissions.
The Elder Statesman by the Washington Stage Guild runs through May 19 at the Undercroft Theatre of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington.
The Golem
The Golem is an ancient character of Jewish history that keeps popping back into the wider culture, whether it be in the books of Michael Chabon, in the odd “Simpsons” episode, or in the new novel by Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni. That Taffety Punk, the innovative, rebellious and punk rock theater company in Capitol Hill, is doing a world premiere of a version accompanied by an electronic music artist brings up certain expectations, especially if one just spent the afternoon watching the 1920 silent German expressionist film of the same name by Carl Boesse and Paul Wegener.
But this new version of The Golem is, instead, a one man show set in the Victorian age — more steam punk than punk, if that, and ultimately more like the retelling of an Edgar Allan Poe tale in the basement of the “Tell Tale Heart.”
Kudos to Taffety company member Daniel Flint for spending ten years on crafting the play and in his own passion in telling it. On opening night he never wavered, embodying the text in a way an author obsessing on it for over a decade can do. I can’t imagine the work involved in practicing this piece over and over — or the patience of his neighbors in its retelling.
This single-mindedness turns out to be one of the scariest things about the production that runs 70 minutes without an intermission. The company’s black box theater at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop actually enhances the feeling as well with its cellar-like vibe and raggedy curtains fluttering (Flint did the set design too). To this, Chris Curtis’ lighting, focusing on trap doors and vaults as needed, lends an intensity to the piece whereas the closeness of the audience, an immediacy.
Adapting the piece from Gustav Meyrink’s 1915 German novel, Flint speaks largely in one voice, that of Athanasius Pernath, a jeweler and antique restorer in 1880s Prague, whose reliability begins to be questioned when a man comes into his store with a strange book that triggers his own disturbing dreams of murder and the occult. The production is the first to be completed in what’s called the Taffety Punk Generator, a series of workshops and performances that helped Flint cut nearly two hours and half the characters (an earlier version ran in the Round House Theatre’s Over the Line Festival in Silver Spring last summer).
Flint lapses into different character voices the way someone retelling a story would — not jumping entirely into characters but changing tone and inflection just enough to differentiate them.
Those even casually acquainted with the Golem, a creation of clay built to protect Jewish ghettos that suddenly comes to life, know it’s essentially a monster tale of an orthodox stripe. But in this version, Flint plays everyone but the Golem. The Golem plays only a small role in Meyrink’s book as well; shunting it aside is like Dr. Frankenstein telling his tale without the monster.
There is a Golem that appears, but its effect is somewhat blunted. On one hand, it creates a huge menacing shadow, perfect for the tale. On the other, it comes from shining a light on a wooden puppet of a Golem so small I thought of the mistakenly miniature Stonehenge that descends on the stage in Spinal Tap, which brings us back to rock.
As a partner in the production Josh Taylor, who operates under the name Jupiter Rex, looms over the proceedings in what looks to be a DJ booth atop a tower. Dressed in fez and glasses in front of his laptops and keyboards, something looks amiss, and aside from some Ozzy-sounding lyrics to begin and end the piece, music doesn’t play that much a role in this at all. Instead, his backing tones and electronic music help create atmosphere, but not much more than do the lights.
Directed by Joel David Santer, The Golem manages to deliver a spooky story fairly effectively. But if this were a commercial Haunted House, you may have a desire to go to the next room after a while.
The Taffety Punk production of The Golem plays the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 525 7th St, SE, Washington, through May 18.