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Far and Wide
|
We try as best we can to create order within ourselves, but this order is always artificial. The natural condition is chaos. Yes, my friend, the soul is a vast land--it stretches far and wide--as a poet once expressed it. --- Doctor Von Aigner's observations to Friedrich Hofreiter which provided Jonathan Bank with the title for his adaptation of the play originally entitled Das Weite Land. |
 Lisa Bostnar & Hans Tessler (Photo: Richard Termine) |
Playwriting was Schnitzler's means for exploring social and sexual issues and what he called the vast domain of the soul. These themes and his smart dialogue remain relevant today. That's why we once again owe a debt to Jonathan Bank and his Mint Theater for giving New Yorkers a chance to see a work rarely, if ever, seen in Manhattan -- Die Weite Welt (tr.=the vast or broad land), adapted by Bank from a 1923 literal translation and now called Far and Wide.
Friedrich Hofreiter and the various men and women visiting his villa in Baden, near Vienna, frequently move off stage for heated sets of tennis. The unseen tennis games are an apt metaphor for the more intense and psyche-baring game of life that for most of the five acts plays out in the garden and on the terrace of the villa.
Friedrich and his wife Genia are the chief players. She's a little like an alcoholic's wife who in the name of love abets his weakness. Her faithfulness in the face of his chronic unfaithfulness exacerbates the more deep-seated problems with aging and death that fuel his hedonistic self-absorption and their marital rift. The ripple effect of the Hofreiters' game of love and betrayal on those who cross their path makes for a complex psychological drama. Some of its characters, especially Friedrich, might have stepped right off the couch of Schnitzler's contemporary and admirer Sigmund Freud.
Far and Wide is like La Ronde in that it examines sexual inconstancy with a physician's sharply observant but nonjudgmental eye, stimulating audiences to come to their own conclusions about what they have seen. It's less of an obscurity than some past Mint productions. Tom Stoppard's adaptation, Undiscovered Country, precedes Mr. Bank's by more than twenty years. A full four hour version, per the original, was staged at last year's Salzburg Festival and will be repeated this summer.
Thus Far and Wide is neither the only adaptation or the first staging since its initial appearance. It is, however, the most streamlined. It has fifteen instead of twenty-nine characters, and has been whittled down to two and a half hours.
Don't worry about being short-changed by these cuts. The script remains true to the formality of the period, yet has a modern ring. Most of the excised characters are walk-ons from the third act hotel scene. The plot, which begins and ends with a tragedy, is intact, its structure rock solid -- with an enormous amount of information packed into the first scene, and the humor subtly shifting to tragedy by the time it's all over. The characters swirling around the Hofreiters are all in place:
- The Von Aigners -- Otto the idealistic young naval lieutenant who falls in love with Genia, and his parents who ended their marriage instead of sustaining it with the Hofreiters' brand of gamesmanship. As the senior Von Aigner, another philanderer, explains, it's impossible to give reasons for betraying a loved one ("There is room in us for so much, and all at the same time. Love and deceit, loyalty and betrayal, worshiping one while longing for another, even several others").
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The Wahls -- the gossipy and rather awful mother and her daughter Erna who has been in love with Friedrich Hofreiter since she was seven and, now that she's twenty, is s ready to do something about it.
Erna, especially in the first act, is given many of the more pithy observations which her late father referred to as "performances on the psychological high wire." She astutely sums up Friedrich's ability to compartmentalize people and dismisses the possibility of a suicide note by the pianist whose funeral first brings most of the characters on stage with "He had too much taste for that." Erna's love for Friedrich dashes the romantic hopes of the earnest and honorable Doctor Franz Mauer who would have happily been "the harbor" for which she refuses to relinquish her passion.
- Otto and Adele Natter-- he is willing to forgive her infidelities but feels less benign towards her most recent lover, Friedrich.
Lisa Bostnar, a Mint regular, is just right as the lovely, long-suffering Genia. Hans Tester is probably quite a bit younger and more attractive than the Friedrich envisioned by Schnitzler which makes his angst about his lost youth seem a tad premature. On the other hand, even being in one's mid thirties or very early forties was much closer to old age in 1911 than it is today. Tester is an early twentieth century me-me-me style Yuppie, at once charismatic and obnoxious. Ezra Barnes brings the right mix of yearning and disgust to the role of Doctor Mauer, James Knight is disarmingly sincere as young Otto Van Aigner as Ken Kliban is aptly worldly as the father from whom he's permanently estranged. Lee Bryant seemed to be still settling into the role of Otto's divorced actress mother at the press preview I attended. Victoria Mack is well suited physically to Erna Wahl though she's better at capturing the young woman's perky wit and willfulness than the depth of her passion.
The design of the production is simple as befits the venue's size and the Mint's budget. Unlike the specifics of the villa envisioned by the playwright, Vicki R. Davis has created an impressionistic villa and hotel, with the unseen tennis games overarching the stage image. While not particularly good looking, it works. The chain link fence, though it adds to the symbolism of people trapped in a dying social order and by their inner demons, is historically inaccurate since there were no such fences during this time. Like Davis, Theresa Squire instead of replicating authentic period styles, has dressed everyone in an Edwardian-looking beige and light brown palette, a cross between drawing room and sports attire.
Having never seen any version of this play, I can't tell you if Jonathan Bank's adaptation is as good as or better than the original or Tom Stoppard's version. I do think though that Arthur Schnitzler would like what he's done -- as will theater goers who appreciate a well-made play with well-realized characters.
| Far and Wide
Written by Arthur Schnitzler as Das Weite Land Adapted and directed Directed by Jonathan Bank Cast: Ezra Barnes (Dr. Mauer), Lisa Bostnar (Genia Hofreiter), Rob Breckenridge(Demeter Stanzides and Hiker), Lee Bryant (Anna Meinhold-Aigner), Anne-Marie Cusson (Frau Wahl), Kurt Everhart (Rosenstock), Ken Kliban (Doctor Von Aigner), James Knight (Otto Von Aigner), Victoria Mack (Erna Wahl), Matt Opatrny (Paul Kreindl), Allen Lewis Rickman (Natter and Serknitz), Hans Tester (Friedrich Hofreiter), Pilar Witherspoon (Adele Natter). Set Design: Vicki R. Davis Costume Design: heresa Squire Lighting Design:Josh Bradford Sound Design: Stefan Jacobs Translation Adviser: Peter Sander Prop specialist: Judi Guralnick Running time: Five acts played 2 1/2 hours, with one ten minute intermission after the first 90 minutes MintTheater, 311 West 43rd Street (8/9 Aves) 212/315-0231 or www.minttheater.org 2/07/03-3/09/03; opening 2/17/03. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7 PM, Friday and Saturday at 8 PM, with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 PM.-- Tickets will be $35, $19 through 2/23/03. Reviewed by based on 2/14 press preview performance |
At This Theater
Leonard Maltin's 2003 Movie and Video Guide
Ridiculous!The Theatrical Life & Times of Charles Ludlam
Somewhere For Me, a Biography of Richard Rodgers
The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Unforgettable Plays of the Last Century
6, 500 Comparative Phrases including 800 Shakespearean Metaphors by CurtainUp's editor.
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