the mirror of truth
by
Douglas Messerli
Matei
Visniec (author, the script adapted into English by Jeremy Lawrence), Angajare de Clovn (Old Clown Wanted) / Los Angeles, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, directed
by Florinel Fatulescu / the performance I attended was the matinee on September
23, 2018
The
last time I remember loving clowns was as a child when my father took me and my
brother to the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey circus in the
1950s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There we saw the great Emmett Kelly and the famed
circus clowns piling out of impossibly small cars and somersaulting over one
another with absolute abandonment.
I also love the Odyssey theatre’s continual
adventurousness and their strong commitment to foreign plays as well as to new
American theater and revivals. Two of the actors in this play, Alan Abelew and
Beth Hogan, also recently appeared in a production at the Odyssey of five short
Beckett plays which I greatly enjoyed. So, I reasoned, perhaps I can simply
overlook my aversion to “clowndom,” and take the play as the grand metaphor for
life that it intends to be. Ignore the red noses (which are at one point were even
tossed into the audience, along with candies), and just sit back and enjoy the
fact that these old-timers have come to audition for what will apparently be their
very last venue of their lives. Even old clowns, whose bones can hardly support
an easy somersault—although the thin Abelew, playing Niccolo, does attempt a
few—deserve some respect if, for nothing else, trying to endlessly convince us
that they represent, in their ridiculous actions, a kind of mirror of truth.
These are poignant beings, Niccolo (who
arrives to the audition door first), the heavier-set Filippo (the excellent José
A. Garcia), and much later, the heavily burdened Peppino (Beth Hogan), are all
old friends but now poised as competitors for the last phase of their lives, fighting
and loving tooth by nail, kiss by reminiscence.
Unfortunately, in the long space of
their own wait for “Godot”—the simple opening of the door by a producer who
might offer one of them the opportunity of, as Beckett is fond of saying, “going
on,” there isn’t much to do. And despite Visniec’s love of the great Irish-French
playwright, he doesn’t have the linguistic chops to significantly explore their
existential position. Their memories are thin, as they exaggerate, forget, and
reenact their past lives and mutual involvements. Mostly, they compare their
different circus companies and their daring dos. It’s certainly not very scintillating
and at moments is rather boring—at least until Peppino shows up.
Throughout the early part, the two old
males have, one by one, taken out their skimpy posters and reviews to compare
their careers, as if pounding their chests to prove which of them was a better
clown. But Peppino pulls out an entire theatrical flier, arguing, somewhat solipstically,
that she was also an actress on the stage and, therefore, a far greater
performer than a mere clown.
The issue is a fascinating one,
particularly given the facts I’ve recounted above. Is acting a greater art than
pratfalls and silent imitation? We never quite get the answer, since the proof
of her talent lies in dying, the first time rather inexplicably but convincingly enough that the two males attempt to provide her some oxygen through Filippo’s “black
box” of balloons.
Peppino, slowly rises, Chaplin-like cane
in hand, to finally enter the suddenly open doorway to the audition studio,
clearly the “winner”—if there might ever be one, of the oldest clown
competition. And we perceive that her entry into that space also defines her death.
The moral, I presume, is that acting does
best comic mimicry. Yet, isn’t that precisely what she has done, played dead,
like the La Dame aux Camélias, surely not a sign of great talent, despite the
tears it aroused in the eyes of hundreds of audience members in the late 19th-century.
In the end, this is a kind of sly play in
its investigation of the differences between buffoonery, mimicry, and true
acting. And along the way, there were a great many moments of simple fun. But I
am not sure that I might define this as a profound theatrical event.
Los Angeles,
September 24, 2018
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