It's a Family Affair

Review of Boris Yeltsin at Yale Cabaret

The first semester of the Yale Cabaret’s 2015-16 season closes this weekend with the world premiere English translation of Mickaël de Oliveira’s Boris Yeltsin, translated from the Portuguese by Maria Inês Marques, and directed by Elizabeth Dinkova. Funny and unsettling, the play is a take-off on the story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and their son Orestes—the main figures in Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon—though this Orestes boasts a pronounced Oedipus complex.

Jesse Rasmussen (Clytemnestra), George Hampe (Agamemnon)

Dad/Agamemnon (George Hampe) looks like a Hefner-inspired playboy, sporting a turtleneck, sport coat, and goatee, and acts like a preening narcissist, exuding presumptuous entitlement, creepy parenting, crude seductions, and a welter of brash pronouncements. Hampe is inspired in this obnoxious role. As his wife Clytemnestra, Jesse Rasmussen is self-possessed and elegant, maintaining a fixed stare at her mate’s more rakish advances and calling him Boris from time to time. Eventually, they get around to a truth-and-drink game that amusingly bares their marital tensions. Meanwhile, Cassandra (Shadi Ghaheri), Agamemnon’s recent acquisition from the fall of Troy, stalks about in a diaphanous wrap, writing the titles of the parts of the play on the wall (my favorite, “Catherine Zeta-Jones”), and often pounding on the door.

Julian Elijah Martinez (Orestes)

Then there’s Orestes. Julian Elijah Martinez manifests the classic mix of softness and toughness that marks the rebellious man-child. He broods and mopes and from time to time flicks a little wry half-smile that makes his parents uneasy. He’s a bit of a mama’s boy—and Mom’s not above inspecting his genitals up close to see how near manhood he is—and his relationship with his father is, in Dad’s words, “a chip off the old cock.” We may be surprised that Dad and Son climb naked into a bath together, but even so, their dialog continues to respect the relationship of father and child, with Agamemnon worried what kind of heir apparent he’s stuck with. In its joking way, Boris Yeltsin flirts with the possibility of hysterical sexuality, but, as with “the revolution,” much of the threat is just a manner of talking.

Until, of course, things get deadly. Is it all about wanting what Fathers’ have—whether that be Mother or a hot concubine—or is it all about becoming what Father is? Or doing it all for oneself? De Oliveira’s Orestes doesn’t have it all figured out, and he’s not the heroic type, but he’s also not the kind to play “mother may I?” forever. But is he any better than his war-mongering tyrant father?

The staging—with three main playing spaces and an area for two musicians (Lynda Paul, bassoon; André Redwood, percussion)—puts everyone in the audience close to at least part of the action, and Andrew F. Griffin’s lighting and Haydee Zelideth’s costumes and Claire DeLiso’s sets create plenty of aura to set the actors apart in a kind of mythic realm. At one point Orestes writes “FUCK THE MYTH YEAH” in chalk on the wall above the tub, but which myth he means—and there are plenty circling about the House of Atreus—is left for us to ponder, as is the meaning of the birthday cake the musicians offer Clytemnestra at the close. Cassandra, gifted with the ability to “futurize,” never says a word in the play, but one has the sense that the play, set in the 1990s but dating from 2010, is “predicting” that the days of the economic oligarchy are numbered.

As the gutsiest and most baleful comedy the Cab has assayed this term, Boris Yeltsin ends the rather distraught 2015 memorably and makes us eager for the season’s resumption in 2016.

Boris Yeltsin
By Mickaël de Oliveira
Translated by Maria Inês Marques
Directed by Elizabeth Dinkova

Composer: Christopher Ross-Ewart; Scenic Designer: Claire DeLiso; Costume Designer: Haydee Zelideth; Lighting Designer: Andrew F. Griffin; Technical Director: Mitch Massaro; Stage Manager: Emely Zepeda; Producer: Charles O’Malley

Cast: Shadi Ghaheri; George Hampe; Julian Elijah Martinez; Jesse Rasmussen

Band: Lynda Paul, bassoon; André Redwood, percussion

Yale Cabaret
December 3-5, 2015

Play or Poem?

Review of Orlando at Yale Summer Cabaret

Orlando, the final show of the Yale Summer Cabaret season, directed by artistic director Sara Holdren, presents the kind of frenetic, improvisatory work that has been a hallmark of the season. But this time, the only devised aspect is the staging. The script is by Sarah Ruhl, from Virginia Woolf’s novel, untampered with by the Rough Magic Company. Having seen the company have its way with Shakespeare and Marlowe, we might wonder if other takes on Woolf’s text might present themselves, which is a way of asking, I suppose: how successful is Orlando as a play? Prose stylists like Woolf might be said to be best in their own element: on the page.

Joey Moro’s set takes note of that thought by offering us a long scroll upon which the players cavort as though, literally or literarily, on the page. And that’s as it should be since, as the play goes on, we find ourselves wondering what is “real” and what is merely the fantasy of a would-be poet—Orlando (Elizabeth Stahlmann)—an Elizabethan nobleman seated in the garden of his great estate and dreaming the world and the life to come. A life in which, at age 30 (and the dawn of the 19th century), he becomes a woman.

Much of the brio of Woolf’s novel is in the rendering of a fantasy of the English past from the present (the 1920s), viewing the past with the prescience of the future. The conceit makes for an interesting hybrid interplay—between the past we invent and the past as it was—that Ruhl’s play maintains effectively. The difficulty comes from the fact that Woolf never set herself to write “characters” per se (all are “charactered in the brain” of Orlando); Ruhl gets around this by creating a chorus who can alter as necessary, through the scenes and through the ages.

The cast of Orlando: Josephine Stewart, Shaunette Renee Wilson, Niall Powderly, Elizabeth Stahlmann, Chalia La Tour, Melanie Field, Leland Fowler

That makes for much of the fun here as the staging and costume work is comical, inventive, breathless. My favorite moment features Orlando in a kind of Elizabethan fetish costume (the ruff, the rosettes, the pantaloons) twirling about on a hanging hoop (viewers of Holdren’s fascinating thesis show will recall her work with gymnast-actors) with Sasha (Chalia La Tour, one of the most chameleonic actors currently at the Drama School) in a graceful white cape and white fur cap. Sasha is the best secondary character in the play, if only because La Tour makes her as real as Orlando is. She could easily take over the play, since Orlando sees that she’s way more fascinating than he.

The other characters that interact with Orlando seem more brainspun: Melanie Field has fun with a motorized Queen Elizabeth, a dowager who dotes on a fine leg in tights, and gives our hero a bawdy lesson in a courtier’s duties. Niall Powderly does all he can to make a cross-dressing Romanian count/countess as ridiculous as possible, including an outrageous accent that would do Tim Curry proud. Leland Fowler plays the Byronic Shelmerdine pretty much as written—which is to say that we begin to suspect that Woolf might be fantasizing life in an Emily Brontë novel or as Mary Shelley. Till then, the point has been made, it’s much more exciting—in Orlando’s view—to pursue a female than to be pursued as one. Unfortunately, Shelmerdine, though he receives the accolade of making Lady Orlando feel “a real woman,” might be any well-spoken, well-born hero of many a romance novel, though for Woolf, writing under the spell of Vita Sackville-West, the meeting of soul mates requires that both Orlando and Shelmerdine imagine they are in a same-sex relationship.

Front: Elizabeth Stahlmann, Niall Powderly; Back: Melanie Field, Chalia La Tour, Leland Fowler, Shaunette Renee Wilson

Ruhl and Woolf take delight in satirizing the ubiquity of marriage, a target that never seems to go out of date, though—in same sex, soulmate terms—it has taken on, in our time, more possibilities than it had for Woolf in the ‘20s. And that’s what helps make Orlando interesting as theater: even more than on the page, we feel the spin through the years (costumes by Fabian Aguilar and Haydee Zelideth are great aids in the fantasia), and we’re even more aware of how the all-important “present moment” infuses our viewing and our experience.

Ultimately, Ruhl’s Orlando “longs to be only one thing” while Holdren’s production, and the mutable Rough Magic company in general, suggests that playing only one character with one gender is a tired approach to theater. In Orlando, Holdren and company find an ideal text for the transformations they’ve played with all summer. And yet, Orlando strikes me as what used to be called “closet drama”—a play to be read and imagined. We become aware of how hard it is to playact Woolfian fictions. Nimble as the Rough Magic troupe is in bringing the play to life on stage, they can at best only approximate the unfettered flight of the poetical mind, as Ruhl’s Orlando only suggests Woolf’s.

Front: Elizabeth Stahlmann as Orlando; Back: Shaunette Renee Wilson, Josephine Stewart, Chalia La Tour, Leland Fowler

Casting only one actor as Orlando brings home the fact that a story, no matter how variously conceived, must always be the story of someone. Stahlmann plays Orlando as if each moment is a new thought, full of fresh insight into what life can offer. She achieves the gusto of the Keatsean ideal of the poetical character (“it is not itself - it has no self – it is everything and nothing – It has no character […] it lives in gusto”), but that makes for a passive hero always amazed at what is happening, much as we are in dreams.

Finally, though, to this production’s credit, Stahlmann makes us feel, more than fiction can, the cost of such flights from one’s time; her Orlando suffers before our eyes as only intensely imagined characters do. In the end, being one thing means being a thing that will end.

Orlando
By Virginia Woolf / Adapted by Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Sara Holdren

Scenic Design: Joey Moro; Costume Design: Haydee Zelideth & Fabian Aguilar; Lighting Design: Andrew Griffin; Sound Design: Kate Marvin; Projection Design: Joey Moro; Dramaturg: Rachel Carpman; Stage Manager: Emely Zepeda; Photographs: Andrea H. Berman

Ensemble: Orlando: Elizabeth Stahlmann; Chorus: Melanie Field, Leland Fowler, Chalia La Tour, Niall Powderly, Josephine Stewart, Shaunette Renée Wilson

Yale Summer Cabaret
August 6-15, 2015

Cab 47 Recap

Season 47 of the Yale Cabaret has ended its run as of April 25th, which must mean it's time for a re-cap of the season. A re-cap wherein I try to recall and celebrate my favorite contributions to the magical basement that is the Yale Cabaret. Ready? Here are a baker's dozen of categories with my five exemplars in each (in chronological order, but for my fave pick), for a total of 65 citations: New Play: This year’s top five never-before-seen, new plays were: Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, in which Alice in Wonderland—or rather Liddy in Wonderland—meets “Little Miss” beauty pageants, written with verve for a cast of crazies by Emily Zemba; The Zero Scenario, in which every Cleveland in these United States is threatened by the Ticks of Death but for a special plucky band of heroes, written by Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, in which a collective of black male YSD’ers create self-portraits in the context of racial profiling, conceived and directed by Ato Blankson-Wood and created by the ensemble; Sister Sandman Please, in which three sisters put it out there for a cowboy, with varying degrees of passion, irony and intention, written by Jessica Rizzo; and ... 50:13, in which an incarcerated black man about to be freed tries to tell it like it is, with candor, wit and a variety of character sketches, to a young prison-mate, written by Jiréh Breon Holder.

Adapted Play: Impressive pre-existing plays adapted for Cab 47 included four translations and an English-language opera: Don’t Be Too Surprised, written by Geun-Hyung Park, translated and directed by Kee-Yoon Nahm, lets us know in no uncertain terms that familial dysfunction can still take surprising forms on stage; MuZeum, translated and directed by Ankur Sharma, tells stories from ancient sources and contemporary headlines, to dramatize powerfully the victimization of women; Quartet by Heinrich Müller, translated by Doug Langworthy, directed by David Bruin, revisits Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons as a wickedly entertaining pas de deux and psychologically fraught cat-and-mouse; The Medium, an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti, directed by Ahn Lê, creates a world of mystery, loss, and deep feeling and gives further credence to the notion that opera is not just for opera houses; and ... Leonce and Lena by Georg Büchner, translated by Gavin Whitehead, directed by Gavin Whitehead and Elizabeth Dinkova, presents a play of aristocratic ennui that torches the well-made play, and this time with puppets!

Set Design: After all, the Cab is a basement with a kitchen, and convincing us we’re in a new space each week takes some doing. Here are some set designs that went beyond all expectation in their achieved artistry: Kurtis Boetcher’s set for Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time made a door where there’s a window and had the coloring and style of a child’s playhouse; Joey Moro’s versatile set for Hotel Nepenthe breathed a seedy charm, like we imagine Hotel Duncan does, or should; Chika Shimuzi and Izmir Ickbal’s stunning set for MuZeum lent aura aplenty and eye-catching beauty to its revue-style presentation; Christopher Thompson’s set for The Zero Scenario seemed to defy space itself in cramming so much busy-ness into the Cab, including a motelroom and a hidden headquarters, and ... Adrian Martinez Frausto’s moody set for The Medium was so fully achieved in its seedy gentility it might be a film set inviting a camera’s scrutiny.

Costumes: Dressing actors for their parts often goes beyond the norm, creating inspired additions to the visual flair of a show. Some of the tops in costumes were: Grier Coleman’s range of captivating dress for ancient characters of India and contemporary folks in MuZeum; Fabian Aguilar and Alexae Visel’s super cool get-ups for the agents protecting us from Tick Apocalypse in The Zero Scenario; Alexae Visel’s authentic mock-ups of the cartoonish costumes of the old Batman series “fit just like my glove” in Episode 21: Catfight; Haydee Zelideth had a field day with modernist Enlightenment-era costuming in Leonce and Lena; and ... Soule Golden and Montana Blanco rendered camp versions of the White Rabbit, Hatter, White Queen, and Tweedledum/dee we won’t soon forget in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time.

Lighting: It doesn’t just help us see, it also selects and shows and evokes, sometimes making for quite magical effects. Illuminating dancers with lights that added to both movement and music in Solo Bach: Caitlin Smith Rapoport; creating a wealth of visual effects that kept us entranced in MuZeum: Joey Moro; putting on a show and putting-on the trappings of a storybook world in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Joey Moro; using light to complement stories and to add drama in 50:13: Elizabeth Mak; and ... creating an Old World atmosphere both spooky and authentic in The Medium: Andrew Griffin.

Sound: It can be used in striking or surprising ways, or to create an aural texture to accompany the action. Creating a wintery world with bursts of music and broadcasts in Rose and the Rime: Jon Roberts, Joel Abbott; maintaining a sustained eerieness and B-movie aura in Hotel Nepenthe: Sinan Zafar; incorporating music and a range of emotional tones in MuZeum: Tyler Kieffer; bringing together recorded voice, spoken voice, and background music into a collage in The Untitled Project: Tyler Kieffer; and ... merging voices, sound effects, loops and his own music to create a shifting aural space in Sister Sandman Please: Chris Ross-Ewart.

Music and Movement: We don’t always get both, but it can make for entrancing theater when we do: MuZeum featured essential music by Anita Shastri, played on stage by a crew of musicians/actors and interacted with by the actors; The Untitled Project used recorded music tellingly and featured a show-stopping dance sequence by Ato Blankson-Wood; The Medium presented a stirring reduction of Menotti’s score into a solo piano tour de force by Jill Brunelle, expressive miming from José Ramón Sabín Lestayo, and impressive vocals from the cast; Sister Sandman Please benefited from Chris Ross-Ewart’s compositions amidst the aural textures, and delighted with a raucous “O Holy Night” from Ashley Chang; and ... Solo Bach showcased Zou Yu’s amazing solo violin performances, combined with the inventive, cryptic and dramatic choreography by Shayna Keller and her actor/dancers: Paul Cooper, Chalia La Tour, Julian Elijah Martinez, Leora Morris.

Special Effects: An ad hoc category that includes whatever doesn’t fit into other categories, such as: the combination of lights and star chart backdrop to create a sense of wonder in Touch: Joey Moro; the evocative projections-as-scenery in Solo Bach: Rasean Davonte Johnson; the B-movie monster ticks and blood and projections and other effects in The Zero Scenario: Rasean Davonte Johnson, Mike Paddock; the varied creepy puppets, hand-held and string-operated, in Leonce and Lena: Emily Baldasarra; and ... the use of projections and clips to tell stories and create context with images in The Untitled Project: Rasean Davonte Johnson.

Acting (ensemble): Ideally, the acting in a play is a group affair, in which everyone plays a part, of course. Still, it’s worth remarking on when a cast is more than the sum of its parts, as in these shows: Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, the big kick-off extravaganza of the season featured a gallery of colorful characters by Sarah Williams, Celeste Arias, Aubie Merrylees, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Melanie Field, Andrej Visky, Libby Peterson; The Zero Scenario, the crowd-pleasing first semester closer, pulled out all the stops with Ariana Venturi, Tom Pecinka, Sara Holdren, Ankur Sharma, Aaron Profumo, Emily Zemba, Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, an ensemble-derived show that focused on the subtle distinctions and broad stereotypes of race, was created and enacted by Taylor Barfield, Ato Blankson-Wood, Cornelius Davidson, Leland Fowler, Jiréh Breon Holder, Phillip Howze, Galen Kane; Leonce and Lena, in which actors and puppet-handler/actors interacted to create a zany theatrical world of kingdoms and encounters, with Sebastian Arboleda, Juliana Canfield, David Clauson, Anna Crivelli, Ricardo Dávila, Edmund Donovan, Josh Goulding, Steven C. Koernig, Lynda A.H. Paul, Nahuel Telleria; and ... Hotel Nepenthe, a comic tour de force of changing roles, repeating characters, and linked situations that ran from the creepy to the farcical, all created with manic intensity by Bradley James Tejeda, Annelise Lawson, Emily Reeder, Galen Kane.

Acting (individual): For individual performances, I’m going with some standouts, whether in accomplished ensemble work, or showcased in two-handers, or in the unrelenting spotlight of the solo show. Ladies first: Celeste Arias, hilarious as an unhinged mommie dearest in Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time; Sydney Lemmon, riveting as Mme Merteuil but even more so as Mme Merteuil/Valmont in Quartet; Maura Hooper, chameleonic as a series of characters, including a disaffected nun and a happy hooker, in Shiny Objects; Zenzi Williams, demonstrating a range of attitudes in four characters, from spiritual to demur to quietly confident in Shiny Objects, and ... Tiffany Mack, unforgettable as a heart-wrenching victim of an acid attack in MuZeum.

Acting (individual): And from the men: Jonathan Majors, finding himself in an unbearable situation and quietly going to pieces in Touch; Tom Pecinka as a highly verbal passenger monologuing his anxiety in The Zero Scenario; Edmund Donovan, riveting as Valmont but even more so as Valmont/Mme de Tourvel in Quartet; Ricardo Dávila as the slippery, caustic and fascinating Valerio in Leonce and Lena; and ... Leland Fowler as a stand-up guy feeling the longings of the jailed and acting out a quick lesson in family history and racism in 50:13.

Directing: For the vision behind the whole shebang that makes it all hang together, we celebrate directors: for the all-out campy and creepy charm of Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Ato Blankson-Wood; for keeping the hopscotch logic and many shifts in tone of Hotel Nepenthe on point: Rachel Carpman; for creating the interplay of stories, including humor, confrontation, and violence in MuZeum: Ankur Sharma; for showing a dramatic and thoughtful grasp of the resilience of a human spirit trapped in a cage in 50:13: Jonathan Majors; and ... for providing the comic highpoint of the season with wild charm, horror surprises and relentless verve in The Zero Scenario: Sara Holdren.

Production: From the above, it’s obvious which shows seemed tops to me, but to bring them all together for a final nod: Hotel Nepenthe, Sarah Williams, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Avery Trunko, stage manager, the kind of shifting and surprising show that keeps me coming back to theater; MuZeum, Anita Shastri, producer, Maria Ines Marques, dramaturg, Emily DeNardo, stage manager, a strong and cathartic import to our shores; The Zero Scenario, Ahn Lê, producer, Helen Jaksch and Nahuel Telleria, dramaturgs, Anita Shastri, stage manager, a crazy sci-fi ride that screams “sequel!”; 50:13, Jason Najjoum, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Lauren E. Banks, stage manager, an important and meaningful addition to the one-person play and the "black lives matter" movement; and ... Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, Kelly Kerwin, producer, Nahuel Telleria, dramaturg, Avery Trunko stage manager, “the gang’s all here” type of theater, presenting a lively riff on the rigors of growing up female in our media-ized Wonderland.

Thanks again to our hosts for 18 weekends—plus a Drag Show: Molly Hennighausen, Will Rucker, Tyler Kieffer, and Hugh Farrell. And ... see you next season, at the Cab!

The Yale Cabaret Season 47 September 18, 2014-April 25, 2015

Puppets of Popo and Pipi

Review of Leonce and Lena at Yale Cabaret

Georg Büchner was a genius and also something of an enfant terrible. He died in 1813 at the age of 23, having written a few plays and a novella, works that more or less tore up the terrain. Like Rimbaud in French poetry, Büchner is a figure that, once he became recognized, can lay claim to having originated so much. Steeped in Shakespeare in the age of Goethe, a revolutionary, a Romantic as only the highly ironic German Romantics can be, Büchner, in Leonce and Lena, the latest show at the Yale Cabaret, lampoons aristocracy, court life, melancholy princes, the relation of master to man, and the course of true love. It’s a wild ride made wilder by Emily Baldasarra’s creepy puppets and Haydee Zelideth’s colorful costumes and greasepaint. Written in 1836, Leonce and Lena gives a comeuppance to every notion of comic drama that precedes it and to most that succeed it.

Directed by Elizabeth Dinkova and Gavin Whitehead, who also translated Büchner’s heady text, full of verbal sallies and philosophical silliness, Leonce and Lena is the kind of play that cries out for staging in the Cabaret. This is a show that wants us to see the strings, so to speak, not simply because theater is illusion and all that, but because characters and actors are “puppets” even when they’re flesh and blood. Büchner is the sort of writer who keeps up his sleeve the fact that nothing’s up his sleeve. The play’s pay-off is the happily ever-after of unmasked automatons. When it comes to “holding as ‘twere the mirror up to nature,” Büchner early on sussed that “there’s no there there” and we’re all clad in borrowed robes.

It’s a big cast, with some notable Cab debuts: first of all there’s dramaturg Josh Goulding as Leonce when at court in the kingdom of Popo. Goulding’s natural Brit accent lends a welcome diction to Leonce’s ennui. Addressing himself in the third person, Leonce calls upon himself to deliver—and does—a suitably self-involved soliloquy, a high-point of comic inflation. As Leonce’s man Valerio, Ricardo Dávila shines as an exacting servant, a Pierrot full of asides and commentary, trying to keep his master to some kind of recognizable code of conduct. And Anna Crivelli's Lena, princess of Pipi, kicks against the role of love interest with some imaginative flights of her own, attended by Lynda A. H. Paul as her doting governess.

There are also many Cab encores: to Edmund Donovan falls the less abrasive Leonce of the Italian sojourn, which is to say the Leonce who falls in love with Lena once he hears her voice. Some much appreciated comic bits are served up by cast members with a puppet on each hand—Juliana Canfield provides slow-witted servants and Nahuel Telleria, in a wonderfully energetic segment, two flatfoots trying to decide how to proceed. The stringed puppets are ably manned by Steven C. Koernig (Schoolmaster), Telleria (President and General), and David Clauson (Master of Ceremonies). Last but not least is the dull-minded babble and erratic mutterings of King Peter, another bright comic turn from Sebastian Arboleda, last seen at the Cab as one of Catwoman’s doltish, dancing henchman in Catfight.

In performance, Leonce and Lena loses some of its sparkle during Leonce’s Italian adventures, which may be attributable to the fact that both Goulding and Arboleda are offstage for too long, since they early on give the play its antic tone. Clambering about on boxes to simulate a trek over rough terrain, and coming to terms with the more lyrical side of life are somewhat diverting, but not nearly as rich for satiric send-up as life at court.

The “mistaken identity” ploy of many a romance is served-up here with Leonce and Lena both in flight from their arranged marriage, only to find themselves inevitably drawn to one another, if only because that’s what the plot, or the gods (and that’s the same thing in theater), demand. Büchner’s final flourish is having two automatons wed in the couple’s stead, if only so that Peter’s edict not go unfulfilled. All are pleased when the box-headed creatures turn out to be the lovers who have found themselves amenable to what they had resisted. All’s well that ends well, and our puppets please us best by seeming happy with what we make them do.

Amidst the shenanigans is Büchner worrying the inevitable clash of free will with law in an absolutist state while seeking what might be called full artistic license. Whitehead’s text exults in the verbal flights and his and Dinkova’s puppet show plays up the theme of the arbitrary necessity of dramatic plots. One wonders if, had he lived, Büchner would have stuck with theater. He never managed to finish his best-known work, Woyzeck, which may be a way of saying that sending up, as with Leonce and Lena, “the well-made play” doesn’t help one construct a play according to a different aesthetic. There’s no happy ending for those born before their time.

Leonce and Lena
Written by Georg Büchner
Translated by Gavin Whitehead
Directed by Elizabeth Dinkova and Gavin Whitehead

Scenic Design: William Hartley, Elizabeth Dinkova; Costume Design: Haydee Zelideth; Sound Design: Tom Larkey; Lighting Design: Elizabeth Mak; Puppet Design: Emily Baldasarra; Technical Director: William Hartley; Dramaturg: David Clauson; Production Manager: Lee O’Reilly; Associate Production Manager: Rae Powell; Stage Manager: Avery Trunko; Producer: Adam Frank; Photos: Joey Moro

Yale Cabaret, March 5-8, 2014