endless circles and interruptions
by
Douglas Messerli
Al
Carmines (based on Gertrude Stein) In
Circles / directed
by David Schweizer at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, the production I saw was
with Lita Barrie on September 22, 2019.
Gertrude
Stein’s A Circular Play: A Play in Circles (1920) as adapted by the
amazing composer/preacher Al Carmines, minister and assistant director of
Judson Memorial Church’s remarkable contemporary theater and dance
performances, is quite obviously about “circles,” all kinds of circles, visual,
social, political, personal, communicational, and, yes, natural. This work is
not literally about “turning in circles,” for as Stein writes: “It is not
necessary to run around in a circle to get to write a circular play.”
No, Stein’s circles, as in all of her
works, represent clever literary puns, ridiculous maxims, and literary
constructions (“Sleeping in the day is like Klim backwards. / Klim backwards is
milk just like silk.” Silk backwards would be kils, a shortened version of the
end of life.
And indeed, despite the Stein-like figure
in this wonderfully directed David Schweizer production, who demands of her
participants a continual manifestation of circles, the poem/play continually challenges
her invitationals to communal relationships with opposite notions of what
circling might mean. The musical, in fact, begins with a total lack of
communication wherein “Papa dozes manna blows her noses” (which can’t help but
call up the crazy language play of Gene Kelly’s satire of the voice teacher in
his Singing in the Rain, clearly based on Stein’s writing: “Moses
supposes his toeses are roses. But Moses supposes erroneously.”).
It is apparent that the Stein figure in
this musical (Jacque Lynn Colton) is not exactly pleased with her choristers’
(the engaging Henry Arber, Shelby Corley, Ashlee Dutson, Kyle G. Fuller, Chloe
Haven, Aaron Jung, and P. T. Mahoney) continual repetition of the incommunicative
couple, the one dozing the other busy blowing her noses, and she quite willingly demonstrates
her disapproval, attempting to move this wonderful cast of 4 young men and 3
women back into the circles she might imagine them inhabiting.
Like Dante moving through the various
circled levels of heaven, she tries to instruct them on the various levels of
circles, the first simply a close relationship of words in the language: “A
citroen and a citizen. / A miss and bliss” (if one thinks carefully about them,
they are absolutely natural connections outside of their rhymes and off-rhyme
connections).
Yet
soon after, they and her move into the “third circle,” which also challenges
the very notion of what circles really mean.
Stein, always a strange optimist,
declares “We can be won to believe that the President saw through the trick,”
meaning the fact that World War I was never a “circle.” But she follows it up
with the truth: “Miss Mildred Aldrich is isolated. Is isolated with the
President.”
Aldrich, who became a close friend of
Stein and Alice B. Toklas, moved from Paris to the Marne, in which, through
collections of letters in three volumes throughout the war revealed the events
in the Marne area of France from her viewpoint (a role that Stein herself would
take on in World War II) that resulted in her award of the French Legion of
Honor. A fourth volume of writing, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (published
in 1919) recounted the grim reminder of what might happen to these World War I US
soldiers upon their return home, something Stein would later attempt to recount
in her brilliant post-World War II book, Brewsie and Willie.
Stein herself declares the difficulty of
wartime living:
We came together.
Then suddenly there was an
army.
In my room.
We asked them to go away.
Early on, Carmines creates a kind of
painful tribute to her single line: “Cut wood cut wood. / I hear a sore.” in
which we perceive the constant drill of the cutter against wood contradicts
everything which she is promoting. It is a painful moment, and we understand in
those brief, but important sequences, that her whole would is being challenged
in the action of the saw, as she cries out:
Stop being thundering.
I meant wondering.
He meant blundering.
I have been mistaken.
Stein’s delight in social (including even
royalty), political, and natural circles keeps being interrupted—at least in
Carmines’ brilliant take upon this work, by linear actions in life.
“Jessie Jessie is not messy,” almost
sounds like a line from the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies, for we
realize in that line that Jessie with her old carriage is quite problematically
“messy,” not at all willing to join the circles Stein is advocating.
At one point the “circles” transform into
various marriage ceremonies, but as blushing brides run to take on the bridal
veil so too do several of the male figures; rejection is as common as
acceptance. Ultimately some actors (Kyle G. Fuller) and others link up with
other male performers while the most reluctant George (Arber) marries a young
woman (again almost reminding of Sondheim’s Company). These clearly are
not precisely the circles Stein is seeking.
Ultimately, it is to nature to which she
finally retreats, a world of melons, honeysuckle and peas, roses, the moon, and
even the sun. Human relationships, as much as she admires them, do not last. Even
Stein, in the end must ask, “Can a circle exist.” It is a statement without a
question. Of course, for her, circles do very much exist. And the lovely
dancing, singing cast have proved that, moving around and about her (with amazing
choreography by Kate Coleman) as if to establish the pattern of her short play,
largely expanded by the brilliant Carmines, and the set by Mark Guirguis, who
turned everything on the set to a deep red, suggested I imagine by Stein’s own
comments: “Crimson rambler,” or in another version of her “Circle three”
Red on it.
It is strange to distribute
it to the women. They can see around it.
It makes them young.
I
presume this is another circle, of all women, who have had to deal with
menstrual blood.
Despite
her adoration of circles, however, Stein is not absolute. As she notes: “Do not
try circles exclusively.” Her vision, indeed, is more like Wittgenstein’s noted
“duck-rabbit” illusion, in this case described by Stein as “A dog with a rabbit,”
not with the dog necessarily capturing the rabbit, but becoming it himself. “How
can you tell a treasure,” she asks. For her it is a thing a visceral reaction: “We
can tell by the reaction. And after that. And after that we are pleased.”
In short, reality is all about
perception for Stein. A circle is certainly very pleasant, but “The balcony is
air. You can put five persons on it.” A world that is not precisely a circle is
nearly as good as one. An island that is not quite circular is close enough.
In the end, despite her proclamation that she does not see the need to bring flowers, all of the cast members do bring her flowers.
The performance of this spectacular play
I attended had fewer people in the audience than on stage, where the performers
danced, sang, and sweat out their performances. That’s sad. Critics need to
learn how to describe Stein’s (and in this case Carmines’) wonderful
productions (he did a great many Stein plays and pieces). This may have been
the best production of drama I have seen this year in Los Angeles.
For my review of Carmines’ amazing
collaboration with Irene María Fornes’ Promenade, visit here: http://ustheater.blogspot.com/2014/01/douglas-meserli-very-long-walk-on-maria.html
Los
Angeles, September 24, 2019
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (September 2019).
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