At one point, actor David Greenspan, in his pre-opening speech, explains, as welcomingly and simply as possible, that the theater has been open for a few minutes due to subway trouble, and hangs up on us in the audience. I am asking you to..
A moment later, without any warning or light change, he slipped into the play and dragged us along. It’s as if he told us to be kind to us with a benevolent trick. Over there,” and removed the Band-Aid while I was distracted.
Truth be told, even those who admired the experimental virtuosity of his early solo projects “The Patsy” and “Strange Interlude” will find his latest project, Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s massive Because I might work on staging a 1934 opera with the cast. “Four saints in three actsas a monologue stripped of its music.
The libretto is an unaltered version of Stein’s libretto — a chaotically opaque and deliberately bizarre text, sometimes exploratory and poetic, but mostly focused on the sounds and sounds of language. It is primarily concerned with the human voice. It doesn’t really apply to plain stuff like characters, stories, and taste.
The actual number of saints in the play? There are dozens, but it’s easy to see that St. Thérèse is Stein’s unmatched favourite. four. This show wants to spoil you. Especially since Thomson decided Before the premiere of the opera in 1934Stein’s stage direction is only part of the show and should be verbalized by the performers.
The Lucille Lortel Theater, which presents “Four Saints” at the Doxsea in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, seems to recognize the potential anxiety of its audience and has decorated the cover of its program with a quote from Stein’s play. increase. Understand it. “
I don’t know if that applies to her text, but it’s certainly Greenspan’s captivating interpretation, riding the circles and switchbacks of Stein’s language like a flow. Ever-changing, his sense of humor is evident, and he understands the flicker of her wording, even as the pieces come together to form a cyclone of discontinuity.
Those seeking a deeper understanding of the lives of the saints should look elsewhere. There is nothing too conventional in this play. Still, the performance is friendly, with one caveat. If you’re caring for a small child who’s going through the repetitive phase, “Four Saints” could drive you straight to the wall.
“Ordinary pigeons and trees,” Greenspan says somewhere in the bushes in act three. Ordinary pigeons and trees. ”
Watching Greenspan perform this play with silent-screen expressiveness and full-body eloquence is like watching a manic cinematic montage pieced together from film snippets, each short segment Independent of the whole, it kind of makes sense in the moment. Or like watching someone with zero attention flip through the channels quickly and quickly. Still, Greenspan doesn’t let him waste a single second.
Despite her formidable reputation, Stein liked to have a good time and loved experimental derring. I hope I can exchange letters with her best friend and playwright correspondent, Thornton Wilder. New.
“Stein often referred to The Four Saints as a play,” Greenspan wrote in the program notes. “I believed her words.”
In 1927, 95 years after she wrote it, her text remains cryptic. Yet Greenspan, an intrepid investigator, threw himself into the mysteries and returned enjoying them.
Four saints in three acts
At Doxsea at Target Margin Theater in Brooklyn through October 9th. lortel.orgPerformance time: 1 hour 30 minutes.