Kleist's Amphitryon

The Roman playwright Plautus turned the story of Hercules's conception by Jupiter into a comedy, but the mingling of gods and heroes in a comedic form must have seemed odd to contemporary audiences, since the play's prologue refers to the drama as a "tragicomedy"--the first known use of that term.

Since that time, numerous other dramatists have adapted Plautus's play, perhaps most famously Moliere, but Moliere's version was taken even further by the German Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist. In his Amphitryon, Kleist kept Moliere's introduction of a wife for the servant character Sosa. (She is named Cleanthis in Moliere's text and Charis in Kleist's version.) However, Kleist also added a philosophic complexity lacking in both Plautus and Moliere.

According to myth, the god Jupiter took on the form of the Theban general Amphitryon while he was on a military campaign. Jupiter then slept with Amphitryon's wife Alcmena, conceiving on that night the great hero Hercules. Yes, there are consent issues here, but this is resolved in Plautus's version of the story by the fact that Jupiter is--you know--a god. In the court of Louis XIV, belief in pagan deities couldn't excuse Jupiter's deceptive sexual practices, which meant that some critics interpreted Moliere's play as a satire on the king's numerous affairs.

Instead of drawing attention to the dubious sexual practices of the powerful, Kleist focused on issues of identity that are raised by the story. When Jupiter appears with Alcmena in the first act, he tells her that he is an Olympian who descended to earth as a "sacrifice to love." But when he tries to tell her the truth, she doesn't understand him. Rather, she trusts her eyes, which tell her he is her husband. Jupiter asks her to cherish him as her true beloved, and not merely as her legal spouse. Alcmena responds that he is both, but the god presses on, saying to her:

     Alcmena dearest, what I feel for you

     Outsoars, you see, as far as to the sun,

     What any husband owes you. Disaccustom

     Yourself, beloved, to your spouse,

     Make a distinction between me and him.

Though she doesn't quite understand what the god means, Alcmena does agree to cherish the night she has just spent with him above what Jupiter calls the "humdrum days of further married life." When he leaves, Alcmena declares that he must be drunk, but then so is she. Presumably, her drunkenness is not from alcohol, but the intoxication of having loved a deity.

The play's second act goes into further detail about the nature of love between mortals and gods. After a tense confrontation between Alcmena and the real Amphitryon--who has been out in the field of battle, and has no memory of the sweet encounter she believes to have been with him--poor Alcmena is about at her wit's end. Jupiter returns, once again in the disguise of her husband, and attempts to comfort her. Though Alcmena has been loving Jupiter in the guise of Amphitryon, the god contends that in her religious devotions, she has always loved Amphitryon in the guise of Jupiter. He asks her:

     Who is it that you pray to at his altar?

     Is it to him up there above the clouds?

     Can your engrossed mind ever comprehend him?

     Or can your feelings, in their wonted nest

     There spread their pinions in such flight? And is

     It not Amphitryon, your beloved, always,

     Before whom you bow to the dust?

Alcmena protests that she cannot pray to "white marble walls" but must envision someone's features when she prays to Jupiter. The god accepts that she must have someone to picture when worshiping a deity, but gets her to promise that she will only envision the man who took her on the previous night. In a further promise, Alcmena swears to stay beside him and cling to him as a god, even if Amphitryon should appear before her.

This is precisely what happens in the third act. The general returns again, and meets Alcmena in the company of Jupiter. Since both Amphitryon and Jupiter appear identical, the assembled citizens ask Alcmena to declare which one is her true husband. She chooses Jupiter, who has been standing beside her. This sends the general into a fit, but when Jupiter reveals himself, he proclaims a divine blessing, saying:

     Let your black woe and care be now dispelled,

     And open up your heart to triumph.

     What you, in me, did to yourself, will not

     Harm you before my everlasting nature.

     If you find your reward amid my fault,

     Then I hail you in friendly words, and leave you.

     Your fame shall henceforth find, as my world finds,

     Its boundaries and limits in the stars.

The awe Alcmena feels before such infinite majesty goes beyond words. The last line she has (which is also the last line of the play) is simply: "Ach!" Kleist's reverence for Jupiter is not found in his pagan source, which gives the last line to Amphitryon. Instead of crying out with inexpressible emotion, the general in Plautus's play simply asks the audience for applause.

What we get in Kleist's version is not paganism as it was, but rather paganism filtered through German Romanticism. While Plautus saw the myth of Amphitryon as an opportunity to get laughs, Kleist viewed it as a window into the sublime.

German Romanticism

The year 1789--when Parisian mobs stormed the Bastille, breaking into the prison than symbolized the old feudal order and setting its prisoners (and by extension, themselves) free--is an important marker in the history of Western civilization, as well as for Western drama. However, even before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the stirrings of a new outlook toward art began in Germany in the form of the so-called "Storm and Stress" movement. Friedrich Klinger gave the movement its name with his play Sturm und Drang (German for "Storm and Stress"), which premiered in Leipzig in 1777. The previous year, Klinger had submitted his play The Twins to a contest at a theatre in Hamburg, winning first prize and gaining an appointment at the Seyler Theatre Company. The Twins depicts a man who kills his weaker twin, claiming his brother will not allow him to fully develop his own nature. Whether or not Klinger actually embraced such a viewpoint, this type of thinking seemed something entirely new and different to audiences of the day.

In a Storm and Stress play like The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller, the action produces a series of spectacular events that seem beyond the realm of moral judgment. Schiller's villain, Franz Moor, tricks his father into disinheriting Franz's elder brother, Karl. Egged on by his libertine friend Spiegelberg (whose name indicates he is a mirror--"Spiegel"), Karl leads a band of robbers who wage war on civilization. In the forests of Bohemia, he urges his followers on to victory over a surrounding army, convincing them to fight rather than turn him over to the authorities in exchange for pardon. Karl then returns home to claim his promised bride, only to discover that Franz has imprisoned their father, who was long thought to be dead. During the final act of the play, recognitions and reversals happen with dizzying speed. Though the final moments of The Robbers suggest a return to the rule of law, the play's original audiences were more struck by its compelling action than any putative moral.

Like Schiller, the poet Johan Wolfgang von Goethe began as a Storm and Stress writer, penning such plays as Götz von Berlichingen and Egmont. Heavily influenced by Shakespeare, Egmont marks a turn toward a new style, one that celebrated powerful emotions and political freedom. This new movement, born around the same time as the French Revolution, came to be known as Romanticism. Instead of looking back just to the classics for inspiration, Romanticism valued the vernacular literature of the middle ages and the Renaissance, especially the tales of chivalry and adventure that had come to be known as Romances. No longer valuing just popular sentiment or cold reason, Romanticism sought to remake the world through powerful, intense feeling.

Feeling is never lacking in Schiller's mature Romantic plays Don Carlos, the Wallenstein Trilogy (Wallenstein's Camp, The Piccolomini, and Wallenstein's Death), and Mary Stuart. The plays' skepticism about any type of absolute values can be seen in their ambivalent relationship with religion. In Don Carlos, Catholicism is the symbol of repression while Protestantism represents liberation, while in Mary Stuart the roles of those two religions are reversed. Wallenstein, though it takes place during the religious wars of the seventeenth century, remains aloof from religious questions. Schiller seems less concerned with what people actually believe than with how those beliefs shape them as human beings.

Schiller's later plays, The Maid of Orleans, The Bride of Messina, and William Tell, all reflect the influence of his friend Goethe. Goethe's play Torquato Tasso romanticizes the life of the sixteenth-century Italian poet who--following a difficult relationship with his patron the Duke of Ferrara--was imprisoned in a madhouse. Though Goethe began the piece during his Storm and Stress period, he was ultimately able to reach a higher level of poetic sophistication in the play, marking his entrance into the new style of Romanticism. While working on Torquato Tasso, he was also engaged in writing the drama that would become his masterpiece. In 1808, he finally published the first part of his massive poetic drama Faust.

Faust, Part I is the archetypal Romantic drama. Instead of being divided into acts, the play simply has a succession of scenes, with each scene written in a different verse style. Goethe carefully matches the meter and rhyme scheme of each scene to the emotions he is trying to convey. The poetry reaches a crescendo during Walpurgis Night, when Faust joins a group of witches and fantastic beasts celebrating a Bacchanalia in the Harz Mountains. In a dream, Faust witnesses the wedding of the Fairy King and Queen, Oberon and Titania. The following scene, written entirely in prose, shows the gloomy letdown from the event, as Faust realizes he has forgotten his precious Gretchen, the woman he loves. With the aid of his demonic companion Mephistopheles, Faust rushes to free Gretchen from prison, only to find she prefers to die there and be redeemed in the next life rather than to live with Faust and lose her soul.

Other German Romantic playwrights include Johann Ludwig Tieck and Heinrich von Kleist. Like many Romantic writers, Tieck was enthralled by fairy tales. His play Puss in Boots stages the popular children's story in a meta-theatrical manner, with characters constantly commenting upon the action. Kleist was far unhappier, both in his life and his art. His tragedy Penthesilea gruesomely depicts the fatal love of an Amazon queen. Though Goethe thought Penthesilea could never be staged, he himself put on a production of Kleist's comedy The Broken Jug. Kleist's most famous play, The Prince of Homburg, was not staged until after the author's suicide in 1811

After completing Faust, Part I, Goethe underwent a conversion of sorts and renounced Romanticism. Faust, Part II, not published until the time of Goethe's death in 1832, embraces the classical world. Faust convinces the bankrupt Holy Roman Emperor he can raise all the funds he needs by claiming an ancient treasure that has been buried since classical times, hinting at a revival of Germany through an embrace of the values of ancient Greece. The play uses a classic five-act structure, and includes a re-staging of the Walpurgis Night scene, but this time with motifs from Greek and Roman mythology. The third act of the play is a virtual hymn to classicism in which Faust wins Helen of Troy.

Romanticism continued in Germany, in spite of Goethe's later turn toward classicism. Writing after Goethe's death in the 1830s, Georg Büchner gave a Romantic exploration of the French Revolution in Danton's Death. What matters in Büchner's vision of Romanticism is not so much what one's values are, but that individuals dedicate themselves to those values with their entire beings. Büchner's last drama, Woyzeck, left unfinished at the time of his death, looks forward to modernism and later became a staple of twentieth-century theatre.

Herr Bertolt Brecht

Last night I saw Classic Stage Company's production of Brecht's A Man's a Man. Duncan Sheik provided the music for the songs, which included meta-theatrical references to "Herr Bertolt Brecht." The stand-out cast member was Justin Vivian Bond, better known as the Kiki half of the duo Kiki and Herb. He played Widow Begbick and also came out at intermission to sing a song that had been "cut from the second act."

Sheik used prerecorded music to accompany the actors, as the small three-quarter-round theatre used by CSC would never have been able to fit all of the musicians needed for the highly produced sound he wanted. (Not that the non-profit theatre could have afforded to hire them all, anyway.) The set, designed by Paul Steinberg, creatively used a number of what appeared to be orange oil drums. Justin Townsend's lighting design somehow managed to make the entire stage appear black-and-white at times, and other times in bright color. I'm still trying to figure out how that worked.

Brecht wrote A Man's a Man between 1924 and 1926, so the program said the play was set in "1925 or thereabouts, in an India that is suspiciously Rudyard Kipling-like." Brecht loved Kipling and was clearly influenced by his work, particularly in this play, which involves the construction of a fake elephant that then gets auctioned off as part of the plot. The play's climax actually takes place in Tibet. The anti-war sentiments at the end show that the disillusionment of WWI was another major factor in the piece.

By 1924, Brecht had written Baal, Drums in the Night, and In the Jungle of Cities, a trio of Expressionist works for which he had received the Kleist Prize for drama. (He had also written an early version of Die Kleinburgerhochzeit, which I saw in Germany last summer at the Ruhrfestspiele.) It was just after A Man's a Man, in the period from 1927 to 1930, that Brecht teamed up with composer Kurt Weill and fellow writer Elizabeth Hauptman on his most famous musical plays, The Three-Penny Opera, Happy End, and The Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny.

CSC Artistic Director Brian Kulick helmed this production, following up another Brecht play he did last season, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. If you're interested in CSC's latest Brecht outing, it will be playing until February 16th. For more information go here:

Classic Stage Company

http://www.classicstage.org/season/productions/amansaman/

Recklinghausen Recap

Now that I'm back in the States, I wanted to post these publicity shots of some of the great shows I saw at the Ruhrfestspiele in Germany. First of all, here's the wonderful cast of Heute: KOHLHAAS, based on the novella by Heinrich von Kleist.

And here's that great scene with the fabric in Red Giselle.

This photo doesn't quite capture the mask puppet in Songs for Alice, but it can give you an idea of what it looked like.

Here's the dish-smashing scene in Carl Sternheim's Die Hose / Burger Schippel.

Dancing maenads from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

The cast of Maria Milisavljevic's Brandung in front of their ice set.

The cast of Der Weibsteufel with their equally impressive set.

Why don't we get theater like this in the U.S.?

Heute:Kohlhaas... heute!

I know there are people who read this blog in Germany. (At least that's what Google analytics tells me.) Well, if you are in Germany today and anywhere near Recklinghausen, run as fast as you can to see Heute: Kohlhaas for it's final performance as a part of the Ruhrfestspiele Fringe festival!

Five amazing actors perform this wonderful adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhass using music, puppetry, clowning... even unicycle riding! The production, skillfully directed by Claus Overkamp, is endlessly inventive. The scene where Kohlhaas meets Martin Luther is worth the admission price all by itself.

Heute: Kohlhaas, a co-production of the AGORA Theater and Theater Marabu Bonn, is playing at 4:30 p.m. today, Sunday, June 2 in Fringezelt II. It's their final performance at the festival, so don't miss it!

Recklinghausen, here I come!

Recently, I received a Cohn-Lortel travel grant through the City University of New York to visit the Ruhr Valley Theatre Festival (Ruhrfestspiele) in Recklinghausen, Germany. I'll leave at the end of May and be at the festival for the the first week of June. It's very exciting!

As part of the travel grant, I'll be writing a review of the festival for Western European Stages, a journal that is published out of CUNY. Productions come to the festival from all over the world. I've mapped out at least 10 productions I really want to see, including a ballet from Russia, a Kleist adaptation for children from a Belgian company, a German piece inspired by Alice in Wonderland, a Brecht play done by a company from Luxembourg, and a new adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

The plane and hotels are now booked. Hopefully, I'll be able to blog live from the festival!