accidents of history
by
Douglas Messerli
Rajiv
Joseph (author), Giovanna Sardelli (director) Archduke / Los Angeles, Mark Taper Forum, the performance I saw was
on Sunday, May 17, 2017
Rajiv
Joseph’s newest play, Archduke, is premiering
now at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum. Having missed opening night, last week, I
saw the play last evening. I’m rather glad I waited. Los Angeles Times reviewer Charles McNaulty complained of some
confusion in the play’s second act concerning the arch villain of this piece,
Dragutin Dimitrijevic’s (Patrick Page) previous failed coup; and LA Weekly reviewer Deborah Klugman thought
that the faces of the performers were poorly lit, yet neither of these problems
seemed present in the production I saw. Joseph, notorious for his rewrites
while the play is in performance, may have done some tweaking, while lighting
designer Lap Chi Chu probably intensified the lights.
Indeed, the performance I saw went pretty
flawlessly, even if the play itself doesn’t quite hit the high metaphysical
speculations of Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at
the Baghdad Zoo or Guards of the Taj.
What this new play accomplishes, however, is
deep insights into the roots of terrorism, and a look back in history that may
help us to understand some of the dilemmas of nationalism we are again facing
today.
The archduke of the title, of course, is
Franz Ferdinand, shot with his wife in Saraejevo in 1914 by the Serbian
terrorist Gavrilo Princip (Stephen Stocking), an event that immediately set off
events that led to World War I and the collapse of the great Austro-Hungarian
empire (for the social and literary ramifications of this event, see the essay
on Marjorie Perloff’s book, reviewed below).
Gavrilo not only ends up with blood on
his hands, but begins the play with his own blood on a handkerchief loaned to
him by his examining doctor, Leko (Todd Weeks), who has the sad news of telling
the young man that he only as a few months to a year to live, suffering as he
is by incurable tuberculosis. It is hard to know whether Gavrilo can really
assimilate the news, embarrassed as he is by having soiled the doctor’s linen
handkerchief, and fascinated and terrified by the skeleton of a woman hanging
in Leko’s office. A virgin, Gavrilo is both shocked to see the insides of a
woman before having been to experience a woman’s body, and, in a kind of
perverse “dance with death,” he ends up dismembering parts of the skeleton.
All the clumsy rube perceives is that
everything he is has long desired: to eat a real sandwich, to love a woman, or
anything else he might have dreamt of will no longer be possible. It is as if
he has already died without having the chance to begin living. He contemplates
suicide, but is no innocent he cannot even act on that. He is a man who now has
no will left.
Just the man for the Serbian military
plotter, who gathers up such TB-ridden men, attempting to forge them into a
personal army to revenge what sees as the scourge of Serbia, the wealthy and
sophisticated Austro-Hungarian Empire. Threatening the doctor if he does
provide the names of those suffering from the disease, Dimitrijevic seeks out
his small army.
Through one of his already converted
would-be thugs, Trifko (Ramiz Monsef), Gavrilo and another young sufferer, the
charming Nedeljko (Josiah Bania) connect up with Dimitrijevic; their meeting
reads a bit like a short Beckett spot:
“Are you the guy? I was supposed to
meet up with a guy.
“I was just told to meet a guy
here.” (something to that effect)
Once Dimitrijevic has his three
would-assassins in his presence, he feeds them a full banquet (presided over by
his comic peasant cook, Sladjana [Joanne McGee]), pulls down a massive map of
middle Europe and explains to them that the reason they are dying is the fault
of the vast orange spot on that map. Like a
recruiter for ISIS and other groups today, the military leader takes these meek
young men and carefully attempts to mold them into becoming martyrs for a cause
they haven’t the intellect to even comprehend.
But the fact that they may be remembered
after their imminent deaths certainly does appeal to them, and before they know
it they are being drilled on guns, daggers, and bombs—all which they are
thrilled to even have, for the first time, in their hands. Even though their
practice session ends in a wound to Gavrilo’s arm—a wound serious enough that
Dr. Leko suggests he must immediately be taken to a Belgrade doctor for care,
which predictably, Dimitrijevic argues against, once more threatening the only
man in the play who seems to really care for these already dying boys.
But the very promise of a train ride to
Sarajevo, their first time on a train, so delights the trio that it is too late
to back out—this despite the fact that Sladjana offers Gavrilo a going away
gift of a huge sack of roots, meats, and vegetables that are good for any
ailment, including constipation and, particularly, if they should have to leave the train before they arrive in Sarajevo.
Gavrilo is still too innocent even to perceive her meaning.
And it doesn’t take them long to realize
that they don’t want to become murderers, forced to ingest the cyanide pills
their leader has given them. Particularly Trifko and Nedeljko seem not up to
the task, suggesting they should first eat a hot sandwich or have sex with
girls. But Gavrilo, almost a prude and perhaps infected some by Dimitrijevic’s
misogyny, imagines still what it might be like as a martyr, a man to be remembered
in the history books, when he knows himself to be a forgotten nobody.
Before they can even come to their
senses, the Archduke and his wife rise up in the audience to take the stage,
meeting up, quite by accident it seems, with the would be killer—and history is
forever changed!
Los Angeles, May
15, 2017
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