Review: Baal by Paper Chairs
by Michael Meigs
Baal was Brecht's first play, written in 1918 at the age of twenty. He had avoided the draft by taking a medical course and he was called up to staff a venereal disease clinic only a month before the war ended, and much of that time he was studying theatre.
Brecht did not articulate his doctrine of theatrical alienation until 1935, but this text and the production of it by Dustin Wills and the Paper Chairs company suggest strongly that he was on his way in that direction from the very first of his career. Playwright and company achieve the Verfremdungseffekt by using plot devices and staging techniques that remind spectators that they are witnessing a theatrical enactment, not real life -- the intent is didactic, pressing viewers to question and to rouse themselves from the comfort of their passivity. It is a tidy justification for a presentational (not representational) stage technique. Many readers and theatre practitioners consider that Brecht's stories and characters gripped his audiences despite of the V-effekt instead of because of it.
I wanted to like this production because I appreciate Wills' exploration of early 20th century theatre and I enjoy the brash ensemble techniques he encourages. You enter the Salvage Vanguard to find a square central stage oriented in proscenium fashion, even though there's no proscenium. Instead, on either side, you see "backstage" dressing and costuming areas, with cast members boisterously preparing for the show. They wear baggy underclothes of tan-colored muslin, they pay little attention to the gathering spectators, they josh, they fret, they give the impression of a circus troupe preparing for one more day on the boards. Some will wander by to greet spectators; others do vocal or physical exercises. The energy is attractive and invigorating.
Wills likes cabaret effects. Once the players are collected, dressed, and ready to go, there's the psychic equivalent of a drum roll and suddenly you have a natty master of ceremonies in the spotlight with a megaphone, accompanied by a pouting soubrette. Repeatedly as the action unfolds the company uses eye-catching effects (dance, loose-membered motion, even headlamps) and ear-catching ones, as well (setting a mood or creating a background by tapping on the edge of the stage or mimicking a crying baby). At deep stage center, occasionally behind a curtain, a lone pianist provides musical accompaniment that is by turns playful and poignant. One gets a sharp whiff of the decadence of Germany's 1920s, a touch of nihilism, a lot of proletarian bar life, lots of leering, brutal relations between men and women.
Preview night was well attended -- in part thanks to the sponsorship of Bombay Sapphire gin and their generous doses of gin collins, for free. A fair number of the spectators on that free ride disappeared at intermission, however, probably further disoriented by Brecht's Mr. Baal, the protagonist played by Gabriel Luna -- the lanky Austin actor once again cast in an epic requiring the stamina of a marathoner.
The enthusiastic company hails Baal as a genius, praising his poetry and calling for more, while Luna sits with his back to us, indifferent to all of it and demanding more to eat. In scenes that follow we learn that he's arrogant, unattached, and exploitative, a steady drinker with no principles, inexplicably irresistible to a succession of women whom he despises. He shows no affection to any of them, except in maudlin retrospect when he has shamed a 17-year-old former virgin into drowning herself. The episodes accumulate and some of them are surprising, dramatic or amusing, but as the story wears on with little direction we gradually lose interest. Brecht gives characters elevated language that at times passes for verse -- Baal is always yammering on about the sky -- but that's not enough in itself to retain our attention. Baal abandons the city, venturing forth to the countryside with his friend Ekhard where they cadge schnapps and hoodwink credulous peasants. Baal pushes away annoying women. There's a beautiful and electric moment when he discovers a reciprocated passion for Ekhard (Joey Hood), but even that he forfeits. He fights with Ekhard; he departs deeper into the woods, where he contemplates a dead timber worker whose fellow workers are more interested in the supply of schnapps left behind by the departed.
Baal cares for no one, not even himself. His decay and fall offer a spectacle without much of a lesson. Call it the extreme example of the theatrical alienation effect.
Brecht was a compulsive rewriter and reviser. He staged this early piece in many versions, cutting its 29 scenes to as few as a dozen. Paper Chairs clocks it in at almost three hours, including one intermission. The company and Luna present eight pieces of verse or song, but none of them has a memorable tune or much effect on the action. I wish that Wills had taken a big pair of shears to the text, cutting half an hour or forty-five minutes -- but Brecht's heirs insist that his pieces be performed just as written.
Too bad -- the message could have been delivered just as effectively, and we could have appreciated even more the ensemble work and the extraordinary acting of company members such as Kelli Bland, Robert Pierson, Jacob Trussell and others who remain nameless because the program wasn't available on preview night.
Comment from Steven Fearing of NowPlayingAustin's "A Team," November 16
Review by Cate Blouke for the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, November 18
Review by Georgia Young at austinist.com, November 20
Review by Elizabeth Cobbe for the Austin Statesman, November 24
Extensive, thoughtful review by webmaster, Yahoo groups, November 26
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Baal
by Bertold Brecht
Paper Chairs
