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The
Devils
Portland
Center Stage at the Newmark Theater
Portland
Center for the Performing Arts
1111
SW Broadway, 274-6588
7
pm Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 pm Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 8
pm Saturdays, 2 and 7 pm Sundays
Closes
Oct. 22
Call
for ticket prices
The
rape scene included in the play is based on a long-censored
chapter of The Devils.
"Man
ever entreats God and the Devil at one and the same time."
--Baudelaire
Newcomers
Beware: Daniel May tries to shake some sense out of The
Devils.In Russia, revolution has always been rife, and
at the height of strife the country's writers and artists
seem to
absorb the energy and channel it into their own work.
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For Andre Gide, Dostoevsky's The Devils was the
greatest novel in Russian literature. For Dostoevsky, no
single piece of writing gave him more frustration and satisfaction.
Modern readers marvel at the vast canvas the writer created
around Russia's revolutionary stirrings, its store of psychological
and philosophical insight. Perhaps more astonishing is the
work's prescience, as Dostoevsky uncannily taps the stream
of Russian consciousness, creating a prophecy of Bolshevism's
rise nearly 50 years later.
But in Russia, revolution has always been rife, and at
the height of strife the country's writers and artists seem
to absorb the energy and channel it into their own work.
There is no native art or fiction worth commenting on from
the American, French or Spanish revolutions, yet turmoil
breeds genius in Russia. Russian culture rose to its zenith
in the eight decades between the revolutionary year of 1848
(when Dostoevsky was jailed) and the rise of Stalin.
In theater, Stanislavsky unleashed an epochal upheaval
(establishing his reputation with an adaptation of Dostoevsky),
codifying a new system for actors that would finally hurl
falseness and artifice from the boards. What's interesting
about Chris Coleman's production of Elizabeth Egloff's adaptation
of The Devils is that it's as if Stanislavsky never
existed. The action of the play is set in 1870, as is, unfortunately,
the style of Coleman's direction.
The first problem with this production is its focus. As
Coleman has previously staged this piece in a smaller space,
he has, perhaps, not quite found his footing on the massive
Newmark stage. Coleman knows how to create tableaux (the
art of our age) and shows a sense of visual composition.
But his actors' blocking is frustratingly chaotic, with
the crowd scenes being particularly messy. Even within individual
blocking schemes, there's a surprising amount of upstaging,
purposeless counter-crosses and vitiation. As a style, Coleman's
approach could best be described as flashes of Piscator's
epic theater theories against a gray backdrop of melodrama.
Nietzsche wrote that Dostoevsky was the only psychologist
who taught him anything. The Devils, in its often-sardonic
way, is a masterpiece of human emotion, as it chronicles
the tale of factious revolutionaries in a small provincial
town who are swept up into a fury beyond their control.
Yet, in this tumult-afflicted stage spectacle, there's neither
psychological development nor thrust, though some blame
must lie with the actors.
With one or two exceptions, no introspection blemishes
these performances, no affective memory or character-building
outside of stock caricature. More damning, there's no dramatic
development in these characters, who end as they began three
hours before. Most lack a basic humanity, leaving behind
an Arctic emotional landscape in which characters are mere
pawns for sets of attitudes and behavior, cardboard cutouts
in a shoe-box Guignol.
Few of the actors listen to their fellow players, preferring
the wonders of their own voices as they climb above the
music's synth racket. JoAnn Johnson, as the aging aristocrat
Mrs. Stavrogin, is again breathy and arch with her trademarked
plainsong delivery; Scott Coopwood, as the metaphysical
suicide, Kirilov, lacks gravitas as an embryonic Nietzschean,
giving particularly uninspired recitations in electronic
voice-overs. Though in far more control of her hands than
in the recent Doll's House, Linda Hayden, as the
former serf, Dasha, still relies too heavily on the emotional
shorthand that nervous tics provide. However, Daniel May's
Peter has great potential.
One script-based problem is what Egloff has done with the
dissolute young aristo-revolutionary Nicholas Stavrogin--which
is, basically, not much. Gide thought Stavrogin to be "the
most terrifying of Dostoevsky's creations." Dostoevsky himself
called The Devils "made and artificial" until the
character of Stavrogin asserts itself as the book's cynosure.
Egloff's play fails in performance in large part because
of her enervating interpretation of the character, which
actor Michael Newcomer can never overcome. Rather than being
the dashing but conflicted soul who is horribly drawn to
both good and evil, Newcomer wanders this ill-lit world
like a dazed kef smoker, more alive in the lines of others
than in his own.
Writing this review gives me little pleasure. I sincerely
admire the attempts by Coleman to transform this city's
commodity theater, where for too long the expressive impulse
has been coffled to considerations of provincial taste and
profit. There's much that Coleman is shouldering that might
have distracted him from this project. More than taking
the reins of a faltering theater, he has been cast as the
city's liberator, as an often enfeebled theater community
begs him to save it from itself. At this point, though,
the promised revolution at Portland Center Stage has yet
to come.
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