Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

In the lead up to the opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s recent production of Gounod’s Faust, tongues wagged over the fact that the production’s director, Des McAnuff, has been jetting back and forth across the country during rehearsals. This was due to competing assignments in New York and La Jolla, California, where his production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar was simultaneously in rehearsals at the La Jolla Playhouse for its West Coast premiere. (The show, which originated at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is scheduled to arrive on Broadway in the Spring.) And while some commentators felt that the Met’s Faust may not have been getting all the attention it deserved, after seeing Superstar on a recent Sunday, I can tell you there’s little reason to believe this. On a basic level, the two productions are essentially the same in design. Apparently for today’s audience the distance between heaven and hell on stage is minimal.

McAnuff’s Jesus Christ Superstar incorporates a metal catwalk that runs along both sides and the back of the stage with stairs on either side. The rear of the stage is dominated by a large blind that is used for projections in what is otherwise a vacant space. Sound familiar? The only way you can tell the two shows from one another without a program on first glance would be the costumes. While McAnuff’s Faust is tastefully robed in the first half of the 20th century, Superstar has gone the way of a futuristic dystopia by way of Jerusalem. Actually, Weber’s music would probably give things away as well. It’s 70s rock licks sounded about as mannered as Gounod’s grand French operatic tradition. And whereas McAnuff’s Faust often suffers from too little stage business, Superstar periodically succumbs to too much. The energy level is high, no doubt, but the historical accuracy of the apostles tumbling moves when approaching the savior may be hotly contested by some of the faithful.

That’s not to say that the production isn’t effective at times. It builds on Webber and Rice’s initial idea of casting Christ as a modern-day rock star in retelling the events of the seven days leading up to his crucifixion. That sense is maintained especially in the all-out finale with its neon lit cross and Judas in dark blue skin-tight sequins. But there are just as many moments when the whole thing looks silly or even amateurish. For instance, most people have been to San Diego enough times to know there are plenty of hot guys there that could serve as leather clad go-go boys when Jesus comes to cleanse the temple. Jesus Christ Superstar takes itself very seriously and McAnuff isn’t afraid of building on Webber and Rice's broad strokes to differentiate between good and evil. McAnuff's vision steers perilously towards the farcical at times despite its good moments.

The pacing is very tight, however, and the evening races by at just around two hours even with an intermission. In the performance I attended, Jesus was played by Jeremy Kushnier with an appropriate serenity that bordered on ambivalence. Josh Young had the meatier Judas Iscariot part and at times seemed to be channeling Tim Curry’s Frank N. Furter. Chilina Kennedy’s Mary Magdalene was the evening’s most Broadway-ready performance and was vocally the most solid of anyone else on stage. Will the show fly when it arrives in New York? Maybe. But I think it probably needs to feel a bit less like Rhythm Nation: 1814 if it’s going to make it. Or they could just cast Janet Jackson.

Labels: La Jolla Playhouse

Evan Zes and Danny Gavigan in Peer Gynt. Photo: Don Ipock./La Jolla Playhouse 2011

On Sunday, La Jolla Playhouse opened a run of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt directed by David Schweizer in a co-production with Kansas City Repertory Theater where it was seen earlier this year. Even folks who attend a lot of theater can be excused for not being familiar with the play considering that it is a notorious outlier in many ways. Written as a epic poem in 1867, it wasn’t intended for a life on the stage. But it got there anyway by 1876 retaining much of its monumental length and episodic nature, which are only two of the qualities that separate it from nearly everything else Ibsen wrote for the theater. The play can run for hours and careens through a variety of different tones and genres. It is fantastical in the extreme at points and later decidedly melodramatic. It’s the theatrical equivalent of Legos where the interest is not so much in the substrate in and of itself, but rather what certain creative teams elect to do with the material at hand.

Schweizer, who has wrangled with Peer Gynt before, starts out with some good intentions in this latest incarnation of the folkloric Norwegian wanderer. He has reduced the action to two acts that run just over two hours with intermission and a cast of five that play all of the dozens of parts still remaining in the new script. He puts contemporary dialect in his actors’ mouths and most of the roles are shared in one way or another, including Peer Gynt himself who all three male performers, Danny Gavigan, Luis Moreno, and Evan Zes, take turns playing. The women in the cast include Birgit Huppuch who is Peer’s mother and his beloved Solveig; and Kate Cullen Roberts who plays Ingrid and Anitra.

Things quickly go sour, however, when all the compacting is done. The story does maintain many of the key scenes and events in the poem and play. But the problem here is not what has been cut away as much as the tone of what remains. Certainly Ibsen produced a satirical work on contemporary ideals and aspects of what he perceived as the Norwegian national character. So while humor is not out of place, the breakneck irreverent zaniness of Schweizer’s adaptation jettisons almost everything else except for a little tired sentiment to hold the remainders together. Set in a single room shack with vaguely Nordic-looking furnishings, the set recalls a Pacific Northwestern version of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. The acting and dialog is delivered in a detached Saturday morning TV manner. It can be funny as when Peer comes up against the three headed Troll King whose extra crania provide running yucks on every line out of his mouth. There are funny accents and scatological humor and, while none of this is problematic in and of itself, there is little substance to set any of this against in Schweizer's version. More often than not, the colorful proceedings are tiresome like some low-quality theatrical event for children.

There are several lovely projection elements from Darrel Maloney that pop up intermittently, and the cast all are clearly committed to the project and do what they can with what they’ve been given. But when the show reaches for a critique of subjectivity in the West, a topic rife for lampooning in the contemporary world, it ends up groping around in the dark even when there’s plenty of brightly lit laughter.

Labels: La Jolla Playhouse, Out of Town Theater Reviews