...[W]e shouldn’t fall into the trap of
equating “new work” with “new writing” (although it’s a bit of a strain
to maintain the distinction to the extent of giving the Olivier Award
for Best New Musical to the 2011 stage adaptation of a 1935 movie
musical,
Top Hat). The
vast majority of the productions covered here are “new work” in the
sense of being either simply new productions or of taking a new
approach to a piece.
Corrective
Katie Mitchell’s
Fräulein Julie
may be considered an example of the latter category, though not by
me. She has made a number of deconstructive stage productions
before, and this one is scarcely any more extreme or rigorous than any
of those. It was, however, the first example of this strain of
her work to be produced in Germany, at the Schaubühne in Berlin, where
its 2010 opening was generally praised. Though, again, not by me.
As in
Mies Julie, Yael
Farber’s South African version currently running at the Riverside
Studios, Mitchell and Maja Zade’s adaptation of Strindberg acts in part
as a corrective against the raw deal given to Kristin the maid, the
third point of the play’s love triangle. Here we see her
conducting Midsummer night rituals to invoke her beloved Jean,
eavesdropping on the others’ exchanges from behind the door or through
the floor of her bedroom, and generally leading a life of quiet
desperation.
Disdain
In fact, Kristin is not merely in the foreground, but everywhere else
as well, often simultaneously. Jule Böwe may busy herself behind
the windows of the servants’ parlour upstage whilst, in an audio booth
at the side of the stage, Cathlen Gawlich recites her interior
monologue; downstage right, her hand actions may be performed in detail
for close-up shots at a table, whilst down left, live sound effects are
added at another. All the components are mixed by co-director Leo
Warner into a live video feed on a screen above the action.
Everything is rigorously thought out and tightly marshalled (except for
occasional glitches such as a wrong camera shot on the Berlin press
night which showed us cellist Chloe Miller getting into position), but
I am afraid it remains as pointless to me as when I first saw it.
For here is the crux of Mitchell’s reinventions of theatre: what
happens when they are in fact anti-theatrical – not merely in the sense
of being occasionally subversive, but when they harden into a pattern
of practice which suggests a disdain for the core elements of
theatre? What kind of theatre is it that restores the fourth
wall, so that – some windows notwithstanding – we can only properly see
the live action onscreen? If we are to see sound and music being
added live, where is the consistency in also using pre-recorded
elements? If those sound effects are obtained simply by doing
exactly what is being done by the performers, why not mike up the stage
instead? Above all, if the point is to show us how even a
supposedly live theatrical experience is mediated, what is the point of
that when it goes so far as to render the actual play chosen almost
incidental? These aren’t rhetorical questions; they need to be
answered in some form, or at least addressed, either by the production
itself or by its champions. And they’re not.
Written for Theatre Record.