Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Paul Muldoon’s INCANTATA is ferociously adapted for the stage by Sam Yates and Stanley Townsend

• By drediman
• March 11, 2020
• No Comments

Stanley Townsend in the stage adaptation of Paul Muldoon’s “Incantata” at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

I recently had the opportunity to take in the stage adaptation of Incantata, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon’s elegy to his former partner Mary Farl Powers – herself an artist – who sadly fell mortally victim to cancer at only 43 years of age. The stage version of the acclaimed poem premiered at the 2018 Galway International Arts Festival and subsequently enjoyed a 2019 run at Dublin’s Gate Theatre. The production now finds itself Off-Broadway for a limited run at New York’s excellent Irish Repertory Theatre.

The poetry-based text has been re-envisioned for the stage by actor Stanley Townsend and director Sam Yates (who also helmed the recent West End staging of Kenneth Lonergan’s The Starry Messenger starring Matthew Broderick). Their collaboration has yielded a ferocious piece of theater that seethes of – in equal measure – loss, anger, reflection, confusion, and tenderness. Taken together, these overlapping, restlessly shifting emotions create an experience that’s at once disorienting and visceral, especially as brought to life by Mr. Townsend’s commanding, fearless performance. But the sentiment that comes through loudest is Mr. Muldoon’s desolate inquisition of the senselessness of Powers’ death, as well as the questionable importance of art. Although Incantata never does quite resolve this existential gridlock, it does acknowledge, through it all,  the richness of life.

If you haven’t already figured it out, Incantata isn’t for everyone. Indeed, the uncompromising production is anything but a quiet, subdued poetry reading. It ensures that Mr. Muldoon’s musings are sent howling with its audience into the night. And those looking for linear, hand-held theater best look elsewhere – the busy, multimedia staging makes limited attempts at clarifying the dense text. What Mr. Townsend and Mr. Yates do, however, is magnify the poem’s themes and emotions via the ingenious, intense objectification of the video camera (among other artifacts) and what its point of view represents (e.g., Powers herself), as well as through the obsessive repetition of substantial swaths of poetry. Those who are open minded enough to be challenged may well find themselves thoroughly stimulated — even shattered — by the artful and forcefully theatrical staging.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

INCANTATA
Off-Broadway, Play
Irish Repertory Theatre / Galway International Arts Festival / Dublin’s Gate Theatre
1 hour (without an intermission)
Through March 15