Aggressive Muse productions lives up to its name with this disturbing production of The Positively Serene Death of Sir Ritter Hans von Wittenstein zu Wittenstein. Under the direction of playwright/adapter Josie Collier, assisted by Kate Meehan, the company transforms a translation of Jean Giraudoux’s piece of 1939 Ondine, turning it into a far darker and more confused tale than the original. Collier and Meehan first adapted Ondine in 2004. This further adapation, according to the program, intends“to explore the Jungian archetypes within the context of the fairytale. They forged new relationships between characters, increasing the stakes and forging new twists within the plot.”
Last year with the assistance of Tamara Jolaine, leading actress in this production, they added music and further revised the script. The Aggressive Muse publicity proposes a “rock fantasy . . . through modern language and poignant music[;] . . a tragic story of a man trapped between two powerful women's desires. . . . played against a minimalist set and ethereal lighting.”
There’s lots of imagination on display here. Some of the actors are superb, while others offer us characters that are engagingly grotesque. Some, including some of the principals, don’t really understand theatrical diction. Those cast members appear to hit all the words in their lines while speaking them as if mumbling into a cell phone. The unevenness of expression obliges the audience to work that much harder to piece together the intentions of actors, director, and playwrights.
Far the best in the cast is Tamara Jolaine as Ondine, the water nymph whose insistent intrusions into the realm of mankind overturn emotions and relationships at court. She is energetic, alluring, vulnerable and emotive. With her articulate speech, taffy-colored mane and long-legged gait, she could squeeze the heart of any mere mortal. To understand this production, one must know Giraudoux’s original script and see how Collier and Meehan have altered it.
Jean Giraudoux was one of many who constituted that French archetype, the man of letters as man of state. While serving as a diplomat for France in the early 20th century, he penned a series of clever plays, adroitly exploiting legends and stories familiar to anyone with a traditional French classical education. La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (Tiger at the Gates) in 1935, for example, was his pacifist’s pessimistic retelling of Homer’s epic on the war with Troy.
His original Ondine, produced in 1939, is a witty, talky piece in which Giraudoux contrasts the water nymph’s sparkling innocence and magic with the stiff, structured and self-conscious world of a foolish royal court.
In Act I, knight errant Hans while on an obligatory quest through the forests comes across a fisher family with custody of Ondine. In the form of an immortal 15-year-old, she is a magical free-spirited water creature. Ondine falls instantly for Hans and wraps herself about him, enchanting him, to the dismay of her simple stepparents. (Stepfather Auguste: “But my Lord, it’s wrong!” - - because the knight is already betrothed to the king’s ward, Bertha.)
Act II, set in the castle, features the King of the water creatures, disguised as a magician, who titillates the court folk by showing them future scenes of Hans, dismayed by Ondine’s devotion and tactless behavior, gradually reconciling with his abandoned fiancée Bertha.
Act III, set years later, is on the morning of the wedding of Hans and Bertha. Ondine, who abandoned him months earlier, is captured and brought back for trial by two witch-hunting magistrates. Ondine insists she has been unfaithful with court retainer Bertram. Through clever comic questioning the judges establish that she loves Hans still. Knight errant Hans becomes increasingly disoriented, for his betrayal of Ondine has invoked a curse that kills him. Ondine and Hans swear eternal love, but as soon as he dies, her memory is wiped clean.
Giraudoux sets up the magic world against the humdrum of everyday life. As Hans says, “They’ll call this story Ondine, and I’ll keep cropping up in it like a great clown, just a stupid. . . man. Not that I had much part in it, really. I loved Ondine because she wanted me to, I deceived her because I had to. You see, I was born to live for my horses and hounds; and instead, I was trapped like a rat between nature and destiny.”
The charm of Giraudoux’s story is the absolute innocence and enthusiasm of Ondine throughout the story. She is all impulse, unable to lie even for politeness’ sake, stormy in emotion but quick to forgive and to reconcile.
In Freudian terms, Ondine is the Id, or the “I,” volatile and forever untamed. Many of the laughs come from her attempts to deal with the arch manners and customs of the court. As in Freudian psychology, the Id is opposed by the mechanisms of the Superego – never in this case internalized, but rather represented by the rules-sayers in court (the chamberlain, the master of spectacles, advisors, stepfather August, the King of the Sea, and even, reluctantly, Hans). Hans, the ordinary man, dies, but Ondine as the essence of enchantment and femininity, lives on.
So much for the background and the lecture.
The playwrights changed this Freudian lark into a Jungian orgy. First came blood letting among the characters: the bumbling King disappears entirely, as does the perceptive, wise mother Queen. Bertha is no longer a foundling adoptee but is now the Queen, and Bertram the hapless retainer becomes her brother, the vice-ridden rival to power. The rustic fisherfolk step parents August and Eugénie become a murderous werewolf and his wife. The ondines of Giraudoux become a collection of bizarros, though not without their own charm - - a wolf boy, a hulking bearded smoker, and a silver lipped succubus.
One clever transformation is carried out upon two self-important court officials, the Chamberlain (Alex Pippard in high-heeled boots, left) and the Superintendent of the Royal Theatres (mustachioed co-author Kate Meehan, right). These are fine actors, concentrated and convincing every moment they are on stage. Too bad that the playwright has Ondine murder the two of them, oops, by impulsive, thoughtless use of magic, and then immediately resurrects them as scary undead judges for the finale. The casting and mannerisms, by reversing genders, remind us of Jung's exploration of the hidden side of personality, the anima (or female) in men and the animus (or male) in women.The authors saturate this text with weirdness, decadent carousing, and violent striving for power. Hans' knight errantry turns into an arbitrary errand to go and live in the decadent city for thirty days "to test his love." Bertram and Bertha, brother and sister,wind up hacking at one another with swords. I've already mentioned the murder of the comic relief.
It's as if they took the gossamer fabric of Giradoux and wrapped it around the Weird Sisters and the murderers from Macbeth, then gave them a couple of hard kicks to get the action started.
In this vision, Ondine is ambiguous, unpredictable, and vengeful. Gone is the sweet simplicity of Giradoux's wraith. Ondine is ready to encourage treachery and apparently to engage in unfaithfulness herself.
It's a fantasy, but not a rock fantasy. Tamara Jolaine's music, available on MySpace, is lovely on its own but usually slows down the action. Actors appear to be lip-syncing most of the time, and the
instruments, mostly guitar and percussion, override the lyrics. Most successful is the dread-filled number "All Is Well," by Queen Bertha (Lindsey Reeves), joined subsequently by the company in this chant of rapidly failing hope. Jolaine provides a number for Hans (cherub-faced muscle man Jake Kern, right), which captures some intensity in the final act. The same music would have been better served in different orchestration, run much farther up-tempo and better coordinated with the action.Random jottings:
The lighting was far too dim for my taste. Ethereal, okay, but less murky would have been better.
Abby Jones (left) was strikingly effective in the minor role of Henrietta, a lady in waiting traumatized by Ondine.It sounded pretty strange in this rarefied atmosphere for the costumed other worldly characters to be asking one another, repeatedly, "Are you okay?"
My ears twitched at some funny pronunciation: "chamberlain" as if it were the name of a French pop star and Bertha as "burta," as if it were a truncated "Roberta."
Some fine facial hair! Frank Rios as the mer-person "smoke," Kate Meehan's confidently sported mustache, and, of course that stacked beard row on Timothy McKinney (left) as the Sea King. McKinney brought a moody conviction to his role as the eventual bad guy who magicked Ondine back to her rightful place.The costumes were brilliant in color and generally captivating in conception. I didn't care for those crimson tunics worn by the officers, including Hans, but otherwise the wardrobe was appropriate and attractive. Ondine's garb and makeup were particularly appropriate.
So where is the Jung? In its Jung-for-Dummies version, Wikipedia comments: ". . . in Jungian psychology the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. . . . 'Everyone carries a shadow,' Jung wrote, 'and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.' "
This version of Ondine maybe was intended to be a walk on the wild side. In a shadow land.
That impression was further reinforced by the sepia-colored video running in endless loop in the lobby beforehand, showing barren expanses of water, actors mouthing silently at one another, wrestling, or rising from the lake..
Hannah Kenah's review panning this production, Austin Chronicle, August 28 (published the same day as this staging)
Reader comments on Kenah's review (12 and counting)
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