Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Three auteurs grab hold of New York theater and opera goers’ imaginations

• By drediman
• April 1, 2016
• No Comments

Cinema has long had the concept of the auteur in its vocabulary, which is defined as “a filmmaker whose personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the author of the movie”. The world of theater and opera has also been known to have their own version of the “auteur” director, perhaps as a direct result of the phenomenon in filmmaking. Theater visionaries like Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage quickly come to mind. In effect, these are artists whose individual style and vision of performance, for better or worse, become more important than the work itself. In the past week, three auteurs of the theater have grabbed hold of New York theater and opera goers’ imaginations: Ivo van Hove, Robert Maxwell, and Heiner Gobbels.

Louis Andriessen’s musically eclectic 1989 De Materie was originally staged by Robert Wilson in Amsterdam. The piece, in its sectional multidisciplinary structure (encompassing opera, performance art, dance, and text) not surprisingly calls to mind Mr. Wilson’s previous iconic work on Philip Glass’s seminal Einstein on the Beach. De Materie’s latest incarnation (RECOMMENDED), which just concluded a sold-out run at the epically proportioned Park Avenue Armory, is courtesy of another theatrical auteur, Germany’s Heiner Gobbels. Mr. Gobbles dispels thoughts of Robert Wilson with his own bag of trickery, creating unforgettable, mesmerizing stage pictures that moodily compliment Mr. Andriessen’s loose mediation on how spirit relates to matter. These visions include a tent city with a couple of illuminated zeppelins flying above; a cathedral populated with shape-shifting objects; colored circles dancing on massive mechanical rods; and finally, the much talked about flock sheep, guided by a single zeppelin overhead. It didn’t much matter that most of the audience didn’t get Mr. Andriessen’s vague, philosophical work; they were spellbound by Mr. Gobbels’ audacious tableaux.

In terms of local contemporary theater directors who have attained bona fide auteur status – albeit on a smaller scale than either Mr. van Hove or Mr. Gobbles, production-wise – few fit the bill better than Robert Maxwell (you may be familiar with his sister, the fabulous but unfortunately recently-retired Broadway actress Jan Maxwell). Mr. Maxwell’s austere aesthetic permeates each and every production of his New York City Players, which he co-founded in 1999. The company’s most recent work, a three-character play called Really (RECOMMENDED) by Jackie Sibblies Drury, which just recently closed after a short run at the Abrons Arts Center, is a case in point. Although Ms. Drury must be commended for penning a fascinating play about memory and perception within the context of photography, the play is also slight and comes off more like an artist’s sketch than a fully-formed masterpiece (nothing wrong with this at all). However, it is Mr. Maxwell’s minimalist yet piercing approach – uncluttered, affectless transparency that gives way to unflinching truths – that gives Really its tone, shape, and force. Mr. Maxwell’s trio of excellent actors (Elaine Davis, Tavish Miller, and Kaneza Schaal) are all on the same page, using language and movement casually but oh-so-rigorously.

Belgian director Ivo van Hove, in his Broadway debut, had a critical and commercial hit earlier this theatrical season with his cathartic production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. Mr. van Hove, for his second directorial outing on the Great White Way, has been tapped to helm yet another Miller play, the oft-staged The Crucible. Mr. van Hove, the most talked-about theater director this season, is the very definition of the auteur. His work on the classics all subject the text to his spare aesthetic sensibility and a formal yet feral style of acting, mostly but not always to intoxicating results. His The Crucible (RECOMMENDED) (in this staging, it’s as much Mr. van Hove’s play as it is Mr. Miller’s, despite it being the centennial of Mr. Miller’s birth), which recently opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre, struck me as the most conventionally-acted of his “adaptations”. Perhaps Mr. Miller’s play – not one of my favorites – has something to do with it: actors here are written to be both stiff and maniacal, which is exactly the way Ivo directs his actors. If it’s not quite the pressure cooker that Ivo’s A View from the Bridge was (few things are), this strongly-acted revival, which features riveting performances form Ben Whinshaw, Sophie Okonedo, Ciarán Hinds, and Saoirse Ronan, is still a great example of why he’s one of the most exciting directors working today, and I left the theater at least appreciating the underlying play. I’m ecstatic to see Broadway so embrace his experimental style. Perhaps the age of the theatrical auteur is upon us?

DE MATERIE
Opera/Theater
Park Avenue Armory
1 hour, 50 minutes (without an intermission)
Closed

REALLY
Off-Broadway, Play
New York City Players at Abrons Arts Center
1 hour, 10 minutes (without an intermission)
Closed 

THE CRUCIBLE
Broadway, Play
Walter Kerr Theatre
2 hours, 45 minutes (with one intermission)
Through July 17