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Warring disparities such as these run rampant through Akalaitis's production of Nicholas Rudall's pungent new translation, which is only appropriate given how ingrained they are in the play itself. But if this Bacchae never completely coheres into a consistently solid show, its exploration of the wrath of a god and his breaking down civilized society on his whim still leads to a largely fulfilling amalgam of motion, music, and mayhem. Glass's notes are the first elements to scream their worth, at least once they've melted into the crueler and heavier refrains that identify the god Dionysus (Jonathan Groff) as a prideful, omniscient mischief-maker. As he intones his vicious plans to prove himself to the rulers of Thebes, his mother's family who have always denied his divinity, his words are underscored by pounding drums and plaintive pleads from the four brass instruments in Mick Rossi's six-piece band. And when the Chorus, Dionysus's band of female devotees from Asia, enters to assume its place as the land's new maternal majority, Glass and Rossi give their sung views opera-weight validity by sounding a pulsing, traffic-like din over which every sensible Bacchant's obeisance may float. The score provides an invigorating baseline from which the rest of the story may easily evolve, but doesn't always. The inventiveness of the music soon gives way to staunchly traditional performances that the oldest of theatrical habits truly do die hard. As the blind seer Teiresias (André de Shields) and Cadmus (George Bartenieff), the former King of Thebes and Dionysus's grandfather (after a fashion), prepare to join the Theban women who have gone to celebrate their new God on Mount Cithaeron, they dawdle and restrainedly prance through their discussion without a hint of the charge that's supposedly driving them onward. Pentheus (Anthony Mackie), the current King of Thebes, on the other hand, makes his first entrance as if shot out of a cannon, bursting with the rage and confidence that will propel him to that same mountain - and an untimely fate - in due course.
Then there's the choreography. David Neumann's work, unlike almost every other visual, is based on Akalaitis's "slow burn" concept. But if anything should be a rapid sizzle, it's this - these women have been released from societal strictures and allowed to connect with their basest lusts. This demands exhausting exaltation, an orgasmic frenzy of savoring delights that have long been caged. These women move as though they're sifting the racks at Bloomingdales, not as though they've finally achieved their hearts' deepest desires. It's a devastating, stodgy blow made even more painful by the excitement of the music and of Rudall's words, which limn as much poetry as possible from the characters' concerns while keeping everything rooted firmly in the modern vernacular. Then there are the performances, some of which are outstanding. Mackie is doing some of his best stage work yet, commanding absolutely authority as Pentheus while still displaying enough of the perpetually aroused boy who's likely to masquerade as a woman and risk everything for a glimpse of the unknowable. Macintosh is searing as Agave, delicious delirious one moment, and an explosive shell of self-loathing the next, as she realizes the irredeemable mistakes her misplaced faith has led her to. Bartenieff brings a cool strength to Cadmus that nicely contrasts with de Shields's tottering Teiresias, showing how blood flows in men of all conditions and stations, and Rocco Sisto is achingly accurate as the Messenger scarred by the terrors he witnessed on Cithaeron. Groff, however, is a bewildering and false Dionysus, less ambisexual than asexual and registering traces of neither mirth nor malice in wreaking his havoc on Thebes. That his defining character trait is his heavily smeared lipstick doesn't fortify his character much, true. But he also rarely convinces in his lines, never portraying the essence of indignation - he sounds like a boy pretending to know what he's talking about without actually having a clue, the opposite of the more knowing and feeling youths he more successfully played in Spring Awakening and Hair (in the Delacorte last summer). Dionysus requires an actor who can convincingly bride the worlds of the mortal and eternal, and the playful and the deadly - a darker version of Nathan Lane, who played the same role in The Frogs at Lincoln Center five years ago, would be closer. But Groff's miscasting makes sense in The Bacchae of JoAnne Akalaitis, which - like the play itself - is about dangerous choices that can be transcendent or appalling, with little middle ground. That this version so frequently soars in spite of itself is a tribute not just to Glass but to the infinite creative spirit his work represents and that the real Dionysus would himself almost certainly applaud.
The Bacchae
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