Richard II and Twelfth Night dir. by Ariane Mnouchkine (review)

The premiere began at 10:30 on a Sunday morning and ended at three in the afternoon-leaving just time enough for a snack before audiences watched Maximilian Schell in the Cathedral Square as Jedermann. Even critic Rolf Michaelis, often most sympathetic to innovations in drama and poetry, found the production-marathon excessive, with insufficient returns either in dramatic action or in human insight. One acerbic German reviewer asked me what I thought of it all. I said the work's core seemed to be the Sermon on the Mount, as delivered by St. Joan. He laughed, saying: "It's a philosophical catch-all. Handke has put everything in it from Martin Luther to Heidegger, and none of it is consequent." At the close there were lusty boos for both playwright and director. Wenders deserved them more than Handke, for it was his fault that the performance was longer than Parsifal, though the actual text is not so very long. Great streches of time were wasted by having characters silently walk slowly around the vast stage, dominated by a strangely shaped cut-out cloud and a few set pieces. This did not increase dramatic tension, nor did it reveal character. It didn't even do much to suggest a symbolic weight to character and action. In fact, the direction-and the style of playing Wenders either dictated or permitted-was so static and soporific that it was small wonder some spectators walked out and others fell asleep. I, however, had to look and listen very hard-even having read the text beforehand -as German is not my native tongue. I wanted to understand the work from its stage visualization in a way that the basically undramatic text does not encourage. As a play for production, it's not inviting, but as a philosophical examination of some contemporary human problems, it has its rewards . RICHARD It TWELFTH NIGHT Directed by Ariane Mnouchkine Avignon Festival Gautam Dasgupta For close to twenty years now, France's Thbatre du Soleil has occupied a preeminent position in the theatrical life of that nation. Founded in 1964 by Ariane Mnouchkine and a group of politically progressive-minded individuals , the company modeled itself on an egalitarian commune, dividing proceeds equally among themselves and arriving at artistic decisions through democratic participation. Employing rigorous improvisatory procedures and drawing upon techniques from mime, commedia, Chinese opera, Japanese Noh and Kabuki, and circus clowning, the Thetre du Soleil challenged traditional modes of theatrical participation in its at81 tempts to create a populist theatre. Since 1967, with their productions of Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen and the erratic and controversial adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream (both staged at the Cirque de Montmartre, and the latter anticipating Peter Brook's legendary presentation), the company has attracted considerable critical international attention to its radical environmental staging techniques and its eccentric and explosive treatment of dramatic material. In its commitment to create vibrant "performance texts" for the stage, coupled with strong political beliefs, the Th&Atre du Soleil embarked on an ambitious re-interpretation of .French history. With 1789, then 1793, and finally L'Age d'or, theatre and revolution, stage action and audience participation , historical data and contemporary social facts, popular theatre forms and exotic ritual devices colluded in making these spectacles an extension of the festive, but nonetheless trenchant, manifestations of street demonstrations sparked off by the May 1968 student rebellion. The Th~itre du Soleil had come to symbolize, along with the Living Theatre and the Bread and Puppet Theatre, the best that political theatre had to offer anywhere in the world. But as political enthusiasm waned worldwide during the late seventies, the Th6itre du Soleil's productions came to be seen and appreciated largely for their prodigious aesthetic experimentations. And if these two recent Shakespearean productions (Richard /I opened earlier in Paris; Twelfth Night was created specifically for the Avignon Festival) are any indication, production values reigned higher than any political or sociological message contained in the works. Both plays were staged on an enormous, square carpeted area flanked at each of the corners with four curtained cubicles through which the actors and stagehands made their entrances. The ramps connecting these...