THEATER REVIEW
'In the Penal Colony': Kafka's Pen? A Branding Iron
By BEN BRANTLEY
Franz Kafka is taking notes. In the intricately mannered production of "In
the Penal Colony," Philip Glass's somber and stately new opera, the famously
cryptic writer can be found scribbling away with dour concentration on most
available surfaces: bedsheets, the floor, the backs of chairs.
It is as if this avid chronicler of life's tortures, embodied by the actor
Jesse J. Perez, were trying to brand the world with his words. And all the
while, a story is being sung to Mr. Glass's insistent waves of stunted
melody about a monstrous execution machine. The "bizarre apparatus," as it
is called, kills its victims by writing out their transgressions on their
flesh through a system of skin- piercing spikes.
Is anyone seeing a connection here? Kafka's short story "In the Penal
Colony" would seem to have an especially topical resonance at a moment when
a federal execution has been dominating American headlines.
But as staged by Joanne Akalaitis, who has famously collaborated with Mr.
Glass as part of Mabou Mines, the re- envisioning of Kafka's fable becomes
as much an allegory of the artistic imagination as of crime and punishment.
By making Kafka a complicitous player in the horrific goings-on onstage,
this transfixing production, which opened last night at the Classic Stage
Company, asks us to consider the teller as well as the tale.
This "Penal Colony," which has a libretto by Rudolph Wurlitzer, is certainly
not spelling out the secrets of a sphinx of a story whose meaning has always
been debated. But for those who know something of Kafka's life and writing,
the evening offers flashes that illuminate the artist's particular
relationship to this story.
Theatergoers who find Mr. Glass's music merely monotonous and Ms.
Akalaitis's stagecraft arcane and pretentious are unlikely to leave as
smiling converts. But there is definitely method, intelligent and
intelligible, in their mannerisms here.
Mr. Glass's signature technique of ravishment by repetition lends itself
well to the story's dreamlike state of unbroken suspense. And given elegant
life by the show's string quintet, overseen by Alan Johnson, the music
subtly echoes shifts in power and fear. (Think of a flattened, understated
version of the tense opening of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden," too
polite to cut loose into a full- fledged scream.)
Ms. Akalaitis, who is famous for muddying the meanings of classic plays, is
actually a dispenser of clarity this time around. Well, for the most part.
Her interspersing of speeches and fragments from Kafka's journals and
letters (spoken by Mr. Perez) within Mr. Wurlitzer's fine, lucid libretto
sometimes blurs the line between narrative and commentary in ways that
simply befuddle. And every so often her staging distracts from crucial sung
passages of exposition.
By and large, however, the evening achieves a haunted continuity in which
all the elements enrich one another. John Conklin's set, subtly patterned
with images of handwritten and printed text, conveys a world of threadbare
colonialist grandeur summoned into being through words.
And it is amazing to hear the shades of suggestion that are milked from the
slim range of notes allowed the evening's two singers, at least those in the
performance I saw: the tenor John Duykers (who alternates with Tony Boutte)
and the baritone Herbert Perry (who alternates with Eugene Perry).
On the surface the plot of "In the Penal Colony" seems closer to Conrad than
to Kafka. A foreign Visitor (Mr. Duykers) comes to a penal colony in an
exotic land to witness an execution by the elaborate machine created by the
colony's late commander, whose legacy is carefully tended by the man
identified as the Officer (Herbert Perry).
Kafka's most famous works, "The Trial" and "The Metamorphosis," are told
from the unwitting viewpoint of men to whom incomprehensible things happen.
But the Condemned Man (Steven Rishard) is not the center of "In the Penal
Colony," which is instead seen through the eyes of the Visitor, who
vacillates between sociological detachment and the moral urge to intervene.
When death finally occurs, cruelly and sloppily, it is not according to
plan.
Ms. Akalaitis makes it clear that the story is the product of Kafka's mind.
When the audience enters the theater, Mr. Perez is already lying prone on a
small institutional bed, endlessly mouthing words. An amplified voice-over
recites sentences and fragments from Kafka's journals: "Writers speak a
stench," for example, and "If I am condemned, then I am not only condemned
to die, but also condemned to struggle till I die."
Once the music and the story proper begin, and the other characters take
their places, Mr. Perez seems to become creator, observer and participant
all at once. He speaks with a sort of fierce numbness and a mock
Mitteleuropean accent, and his expression often suggests a mild surprise at
where events have taken him.
Ms. Akalaitis has always been fond of mysterious hieroglyphic gestures, and
here she uses them liberally to punctuate both music and silence. Some of
them are severe, formal hand movements, evoking a system determined by rote
and measurement; others, like the Visitor's continued wiping of his brow,
are less obviously ritualized.
Mr. Perez's Kafka mirrors all of these gestures at some point. He seems
implicitly to identify with each of the characters, somehow dispersing
guilt, power, helplessness and confusion equally among them all. That Mr.
Rishard and Sterling K. Brown (as the attending Soldier) never speak doesn't
mean that they aren't part of this equation of dark empathy.
Mr. Duykers — who here bears an unsettling resemblance to that ultimate
observer, Henry James — and Mr. Perry sing with admirable control and
clarity. I was especially struck by how much the simple contrast between
their ranges defines their characters. Mr. Perry has the evening's most
stunning passage, in which he describes the executions of yore in a grave
but honeyed voice that caresses his brutal words.
I won't go into the metaphor Ms. Akalaitis has taken pains to set up, in
which the workings of the execution device parallel those of the artist who
has envisioned it. Explanations would only sound labored. But in the
viewing, these images give off a taint of shame and outrage that eventually
creeps into the audience.
The machine itself would seem to be something best left to an audience's
imagination, but Mr. Conklin and the superb lighting designer Jennifer
Tipton have made it a deliberately artificial image of considerable beauty.
Once its mortal gears begin to grind, you're more likely to feel chilled
than sweaty with anxiety. That's the kind of production this is.
But within that iciness is the hot stab of guilt that comes from being the
accused, the executioner and the watcher all at once. This is, after all,
Franz Kafka's show.
IN THE PENAL COLONY
By Philip Glass; libretto by Rudolph Wurlitzer; based on the original story
by Franz Kafka; directed by JoAnne Akalaitis. Conductor and music director,
Alan Johnson; sets by John Conklin; costumes by Susan Hilferty; lighting by
Jennifer Tipton; sound by Dominic Kramers; additional sound design by Jane
Shaw; production stage manager, Martha Donaldson; general manager, Rachel M.
Tischler; production manager, Ian Tresselt. Presented by the Classic Stage
Company, Barry Edelstein, artistic director; Beth Emelson, producing
director. At 136 East 13th Street, East Village.
WITH: Jesse J. Perez (Kafka), John Duykers or Tony Boutte (Visitor), Steven
Rishard (Condemned Man), Sterling K. Brown (Soldier) and Herbert Perry or
Eugene Perry (Officer).
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 15 2001 - 14:19:06 PDT