Three Phaedra(s) Too Many

Abstract

Three Phaedra(s) Too Many HELAINE L. SMITH The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and, till action, lust Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted, and no sooner had, Past reason hated . . . Sonnet 129 is superb, but, as Shakespeare knew, the relentless presentation of lust does not produce viable theatre. Phaedra(s) of Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe cobbled together three texts whose subject was Eros, violent, self-destructive, and unquenchable, the sort of Eros whose only end is death. The audience’s expectation, mine, at least, was for an evening of ancient tragedy rewritten and updated in the manner of Marguerite Johnson’s superb “Medea, Fitzgerald Gallery, New York City, 1966”1 or Marguerite Yourcenar’s Fires. But what Krzysztof Warlikowski and Piotr Gruszczynski presented was Eros as always and only bestial and agonizing. That presentation occupied nearly four hours. The inside of The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theatre is faux distressed, perhaps the result of a demolition and restoration years past that never was completed. With a few contemporary touches—two working sinks, a microphone Phaedra(s), After Wajdi Mouawad, Sarah Kane, and J.M.Coetzee. Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe; Dramaturgy by Piotr Gruszczynski; Set and costume design by Malgorzata Szczesniak; Lighting design by Felice Ross; Music by Pawel Mykietyn; Video design by Denis Gueguin; Choreography by Claude Bardouil and Rosalba Torres Guerrero; Starring Isabelle Huppert, Gael Kamilindi, Andrzej Chyra, Alex Descas, and Agata Buzek. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, September 13–18, 2016. arion 24.2 fall 2016 stand, a set of triangular industrial ceiling lights—and surrounded by stone-colored marble and a mirrored wall stage right, the set of Phaedra(s) seemed at once ancient and modern . The Harvey’s walls of peeling and mottled green, cream, and pink looked from where I sat as if a Roman fresco had just flaked off but might show itself faintly at any moment. Lines of ionic columns and decorative double arches extending outward from the stage further suggested a Greco-Roman space ideally suited to drama that would move back or forth in time. A singer entered, took the microphone and began an ever louder Arabic chant. Rosalba Torres Guerrero appeared, not at all the belly-dancing figure some critics describe. Her movements were, in fact, a modern variant, via Nureyev, of Nijinsky’s in L’Apres-midi d’un faune: flattening herself into imagined two-dimensional space, knees, elbows, and wrists at sharp angles, angular, jerky, even mechanistic, the faune/dancer moved through space, an emblem of sexual innocence and sexual awakening. Here was the essence of Phaedra’s ambivalence. As the insistent and deep-throated singing propelled Torres Guerrero’s body from one pose to another, the prologue suggested what the Phaedra(s) would reveal in different ways and varying proportions—that Eros overwhelms body and spirit, as the music did the dancer, and that love, for Phaedra as for the faune, is almost unbearable, innocent and knowing. Then the first play of the trilogy began. But instead of something touching and powerful, Warlikowski drowned us in turgid, writhing scene after scene, Huppert’s voice rising to screams and subsiding to sobs, Kamindi’s Hippolyte turning into a barking dog, and no one knowing why. In the course of the evening, Phaedra vomited, Theseus fucked a corpse, Hippolyte was reported as having masturbated into a dirty sock, and acts of fellatio were twice performed. We were neither shocked nor horrified. What we were was bored. Euripides, Seneca and Racine do not bore because they write with beauty about the mainsprings of grief and error, and present emotion in incremental terms. Their intenTHREE PHAEDRA(S) TOO MANY 158 tion is not to épater le bourgeoisie but to express a shared humanity. And yet there is perhaps nothing more shocking or horrible to read than Seneca’s description of the death of Hippolytus, or sadder than Theseus’ final curse, after he orders a funeral pyre for the remnants of his son...