EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL - 2012, 2014, 2016 & 2018
ACTOR - PLAYWRIGHT - DIRECTOR - VOICE & DIALECT COACH
The Trojan Women
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2012
To Chekhov With Love: The White Peacock & Afterplay
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2014
All Through The Night
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2014
Who Killed Pablo Neruda?
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2016
A Scarlet Letter
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2018
In January of 2012, I began my many Edinburgh Fringe Festival collaborations with Professor Joseph Whelan of Syracuse Stage and SU Drama. In my first project of The Trojan Women by Seneca, I was invited to vocal coach as well as assistant direct the production. I was also the warm-up and text coach to the actors on this heightened language play in verse and contributed to assisting the production overall and the actors at all rehearsals and performances at The Quaker Meeting House Theatre.
In the spring of 2013, I was asked to direct my colleagues Joseph Whelan and Leslie Noble in a project—I suggested Brian Friel’s one-act play, Afterplay. What followed was year’s collaborative rehearsal process of staging a reading at Phoebe’s Café, then presenting the production fully realized to the SU Drama community with a live Russian music mash-up played by Professor Felix Ivanov and BFA Actor, Jenna Fields. Our work culminated in a production accepted at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival with an original one-act called The White Peacock, which I wrote as a companion piece for myself and three BFA Actors who wanted to return to the Festival with me and perform in this new play inspired by the love letters of Olga Knipper to Anton Chekhov when she was separated from her ailing lover performing his plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters.
I worked simultaneously on the To Chekhov With Love duo-projects with another student Fringe production that came over with us, All Through The Night. I coached the German Accents suggested by the playwright with our SU Drama actors enrolled in the SU Study Abroad Edinburgh Fringe Program 2014 who performed the production in association with The Quaker Meeting House Artistic Staff.
REVIEWS - Three Stars
Friday 17 August 2012 | By Iain Martin
ED2012 Theatre Review: The Trojan Women (Syracuse University Drama)
ED2012 3/5 Reviews ED2012 Theatre Reviews
This is a solid production of Seneca’s The Trojan Women. Syracuse University Drama ably capture the timelessness of the piece’s themes, utilising modern costumes and drawing parallels between the text and the recent history of America; the program denotes the setting as being “near the smouldering ruins of fallen towers” and at one point a character is threatened with waterboarding. This works well, helping make what is a 2000 year old, relentlessly tragic play both accessible and enjoyable for modern audiences. As a whole the acting on display is efficient, but without often truly hitting the heights of greatness. Some cast members are definitely stronger than others though; Alyssa Castellano delivers a standout performance as the grieving mother Andromache.
Quaker Meeting House, 6-11 Aug, 8.15pm tw rating 3/5 | [Iain Martin]
To Chekhov with Love
Written and directed by Celia Madeoy Presented by Syracuse University Department of Drama at the Quaker Meeting House, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2014, Scotland
To Chekhov With Love: Afterplay and The White Peacock (Two One-Act Plays)
by Stuart Mckenzie on 8th August 2014
From the critically acclaimed SU Drama company comes a double play performance that combines Brien Friel’s Afterplay and an original piece named The White Peacock. One play is brilliant; one play is terrible. But would you believe that the cast-written play trumps the Irish behemoth?
What could have easily been a four-star performance is ruined as Afterplay tarnishes the momentum of The White Peacock.
Opening with traditional Russian folk music, arranged and performed by Olga and Felix Ivanoff, The White Peacock begins with three mysterious women, known only as “the actresses,” who express their undying love for Anton Chekhov by listing his preferences and pet hates, echoing in a sing-song, synchronised chorus. Their lyrical voices are stopped short by the introduction of Olga Knipper, the only wife of Chekhov, who shared a short-lived marriage with the Russian playwright.
As a standalone play, The White Peacock is somewhat difficult to follow if one is unfamiliar with Chekhov’s life and works; the exclusive nature of the play can seem intimidating at times and leave one feeling slightly confused. However, even the most theatre-ignorant person can appreciate the talent of the actors and their power in creating vividly real characters, with particular praise going to writer and star Celia Madeoy as Olga. With a clear structure, The White Peacock is highly original and invites a whole new perspective to the life of Anton Chekhov.
The same cannot, however, be said for the second piece of the night: Afterplay. With little character development, Brian Friel’s drama is dull and unengaging and can only be fully appreciated in the context of Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, which Afterplay continues on from. The drama centres upon Andrey from Three Sisters and Sonya from Uncle Vanya in their encounter in a café and the small talk they make. The lack of conflict or any discernable plot leads to a fifty-minute slog of boredom until the discussion of Andrey’s life secret, but this arrives far too late to redeem the remainder of the act.
Perhaps it is wrong to blame the actors for their part. Certainly, both Leslie Noble and Joseph Whelan as Sonya and Andrey respectively are skilled enough to make the acting in Afterplay creditable. To give further credit where it is due, the Quaker Meeting House uses a rising stand that allows all audience members a perfect view of the stage, whilst the lighting in both plays is covered effectively well by the sound and technician expert Susannah Baron.
The use of Russian language and music adds to the production’s professionalism, whilst the slide show is effective in helping one keep up with the relevant history of Chekhov. That said, the choice of Brian Friel’s drama precludes a memorable evening. Call me unsophisticated, but listening to a discussion about mouldy brown bread, trees and cold tea for an hour is as tedious as it is pointless.
atomies
To Chekhov With Love
Posted on 8 August 2014 by atomies
The White Peacock
Written and directed by Celia Madeoy Presented by Syracuse University Department of Drama at the Quaker Meeting House on 7 August 2014
A strong central performance by Celia Madeoy as Olga Knipper (affectionately called “Knipschitz” by Chekhov, who also signs off one letter with “Big kiss, my little doggie”), whose relationship with the playwright is a complex mix of emotional and professional ties.
She pleads: Love me a little — I need it. A couple of lines later she apologizes for being “clingy” and yet I’d already concluded that she was nothing of the sort — that “I need it” was delivered by a woman who already had her own identity bound up in her acting and her own work. She is no groupie hanging around a star of the theatre, but a significant player herself, bringing the work to life on stage. (And what life! The original productions played to packed houses in Moscow — audiences running into the thousands. Unfortunately, this production, despite its merits, attracted an audience of only half a dozen, not untypical for even good Fringe shows.)
This theme of work is key — everyone has something to contribute, even the three unnamed actresses who mill around Olga, bringing a little confusion to the piece. It’s sometimes not clear who they’re meant to be or whose words they’re speaking, which might actually be in keeping with the line about women liking gin or vodka, “the clear ones” that can be tippled before lunch (a rule ignored by Blanche DuBois!).
Madeoy is encased in a fine-looking, black, period dress that is a physical restraint (and no doubt a nightmare to wear on a hot day in a small venue) and a counterpoint to the emotionally candid revelations of her character:
It’s like he’s touching me when he talks.
The sensuality is all in the intonation and the unexaggerated but expressive gestures — no bare flesh needed! (The opposite was the case in the next show we saw.)
Apparently, Chekhov loved three things (including white peacocks and antique maps of America) and he hated three things (including crying children and raspberry jam).
The final, poignant line:
Don’t dare cough.
Afterplay
By Brian Friel Directed by Celia Madeoy Presented by Syracuse University Department of Drama at the Quaker Meeting House on 7 August 2014
The time shifts forward from around 1900 to 1922, when two refugee characters from Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters — Sonya (Yelena’s step-daughter) and Andrey (the brother) — meet by chance in a café. It’s entirely apt that these fictions are themselves rather good at creating their own fictions, especially Andrey, who hopes to impress Sonya with his career as a violinist in an orchestra playing La Bohème. Joseph Whelan is plausibly dressed and looks the part, and talks about the hardships of a whole day spent rehearsing (all those hours on a hard seat make for a numb bottom — not unlike the effects of the five-hour journey we’d just endured from London to Edinburgh).
Poor Andrey misjudges his audience when he boasts how their Mimi is stunningly beautiful, and only 19! “Good for her!” is Sonya’s reply, a dry compliment delivered through a gritted smile. Sonya, who has been in love with Dr Astrov for 23 years, cannot compete with such youth. Leslie Noble invests her character with a lively and yet restrained desperation — she faces returning to an empty house, dripping eaves, and machines rusting in the yard, to “an endless tundra” of loneliness. Both her and Whelan’s performances are compelling.
The theme of the importance of a working life continues into this play, with Sonya more than capable of running the estate, unlike Uncle Vanya, who wouldn’t let her take over because she was a woman. Vanya is the kind of man who positive he’s right, with “absolutely no conviction.”
Andrey describes his three sisters as living life as if they were in a waiting room, which, again rather tactlessly, is exactly Sonya’s experience. No wonder she has a little bottle of vodka stashed in her bag, which she brings out surreptitiously when Andrey’s not looking — and then she offers him some when he returns.
Just as she is trying to muster a little courage to face her return home, she decides to stay for the opening night, which is when she discovers the extent of Andrey’s deception. He calls them “my fictions”; she has another phrase: “bloody lies.”
It was never going to work out between these two anyway: she still adores Astrov, who doesn’t believe in God but does believe in the perfectability of man (just like Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard). The Chekhovian joke here is that the two specimens in front of us are far from claiming such a state for themselves, and it’s inconceivable how they could go about achieving anything remotely resembling perfection. Andrey is a busker, and Sonya has lost the love of her life to Yelena, and they are both sympathetic characters.
This entry was posted in Quaker Meeting House.
Saturday 9 August 2014 | By Charlotte Taylor
ED2014 Theatre Review: To Chekhov With Love (Syracuse University Department Of Drama)
ED2014 3/5 Reviews ED2014 Theatre Reviews
‘To Chekhov with Love’ is exactly what one would expect: an homage to Chekhov, celebrating him and the characters he crafted. The production consists of two plays: ‘The White Peacock’, based on his love letters, and ‘Afterplay’, in which Sonya (Uncle Vanya) and Andrey (Three Sisters) meet. ‘Afterplay’ is undoubtedly the stronger of the two, as the former often feels tediously sycophantic towards an author who is already celebrated enough. Nonetheless, the overall production is actually rather engaging, thanks to some well-honed performances from Leslie Noble and Joseph Whelan, who seem to inhabit their roles like a second skin. Although solid enough, the lingering issue with this production is – is it necessary?
Quaker Meeting House, until 9 Aug. tw rating 3/5 | [Charlotte Taylor]
All Through the Night
by Aron Penczu on 9th August 2014
Shirley Lauro’s drama All Through the Night opens badly, but it gets better. It begins with clumsy exposition: a stern teacher’s every lesson tells us only about the Third Reich. History? We learn how the Germans were ‘stabbed in the back’ at Versailles. Music? ‘We will become fiery Conquerors!/ And the Reich in Triumph will shine!’ We are helpfully informed that the Party is taking over every girl’s organization in Germany, that the Party can open mail, tap phones, and check medical records (and more) to find suspected dissidents. If the play weren’t 13 years old, you’d swear these were Snowden parallels.
Syracuse’s University’s production, on the whole, is good. The costumes are convincing, and the acting, if uneven, has notable highlights
Fortunately, this is soon over, and we move on with the difficult, affecting tale of four women’s passage into adulthood. The fairy tale-frame works well: Ludmilla, our narrator, prompts the cast to their slow reminiscences. The story’s stubborn unwillingness to suit her ‘happily ever after’ vision allows it to testify to the complexities of life.
There is complexity in the characters, too. Gretchen (Allison Fifield) is enthusiastic about National Socialism until Kristallnacht strips her of her illusions. Both her self-serving, self-deluding enthralment and subsequent disenchantment are understandable and deeply human. Like the hospital director (Brady Richards) she is a basically decent person living in a world that demanded monstrous things of her — a case study for Arendt’s banality hypothesis.
All Through the Night has moments of achievement and promise.
And Syracuse’s University’s production, on the whole, is good. The costumes are convincing, and the acting, if uneven, has notable highlights: Taylor Anderson as the schoolmistress; Iniki Mariano as a truly sadistic Nazi; Brady Richards, whose German accent is perfect even when he’s angry. And there are moments of hair-raising intensity. In one compelling scene Angelika (Meredith Bechtel) is forced to strip into her underclothes onstage: its painful intimacy marks it as one of the most effective in the play. The projection of arch titles isn’t always felicitous — ‘The Lord Giveth, the Lord Taketh Away’ finds Angelika in a concentration camp — but images of Ecuadorean artist Oswaldo Guayasamín’s work are used to powerful effect.
The natural gravity of All Through the Night’s subject matter, however, is undermined by its clumsy navigation of languages. If the German accents are mostly good, though unnecessary — particularly considering Angelika and Gretchen’s frankly American voices — the replacement of simple words with their German cognates, like ‘und’ for ‘and’ and ‘mutter’ for ‘mother’, is gratuitous and rather mystifying, not to mention grating. Even worse is the reduction of tenses to the present erroneous (‘We both be sent to camp!’): does this imply that the Germans are inexplicably telling their story in broken English, or that they don’t speak German themselves?
All Through the Night is a play with a purpose: to draw attention to the previously under-examined plight of gentile women under the Third Reich. One might be forgiven for being uneasy about this kind of thing, fearing that a sense of social duty can distort aesthetic judgements. But, it’s also true that this kind of purpose takes writers to fresh places. Which is to say: All Through the Night has moments of achievement and promise. If only it were a little subtler.
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2012
To Chekhov With Love: The White Peacock & Afterplay
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2014
All Through The Night
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2014
Who Killed Pablo Neruda?
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2016
A Scarlet Letter
Syracuse University Drama in association with The Quaker Meeting House/Venue 40, Edinburgh, Scotland – 2018
In January of 2012, I began my many Edinburgh Fringe Festival collaborations with Professor Joseph Whelan of Syracuse Stage and SU Drama. In my first project of The Trojan Women by Seneca, I was invited to vocal coach as well as assistant direct the production. I was also the warm-up and text coach to the actors on this heightened language play in verse and contributed to assisting the production overall and the actors at all rehearsals and performances at The Quaker Meeting House Theatre.
In the spring of 2013, I was asked to direct my colleagues Joseph Whelan and Leslie Noble in a project—I suggested Brian Friel’s one-act play, Afterplay. What followed was year’s collaborative rehearsal process of staging a reading at Phoebe’s Café, then presenting the production fully realized to the SU Drama community with a live Russian music mash-up played by Professor Felix Ivanov and BFA Actor, Jenna Fields. Our work culminated in a production accepted at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival with an original one-act called The White Peacock, which I wrote as a companion piece for myself and three BFA Actors who wanted to return to the Festival with me and perform in this new play inspired by the love letters of Olga Knipper to Anton Chekhov when she was separated from her ailing lover performing his plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters.
I worked simultaneously on the To Chekhov With Love duo-projects with another student Fringe production that came over with us, All Through The Night. I coached the German Accents suggested by the playwright with our SU Drama actors enrolled in the SU Study Abroad Edinburgh Fringe Program 2014 who performed the production in association with The Quaker Meeting House Artistic Staff.
REVIEWS - Three Stars
Friday 17 August 2012 | By Iain Martin
ED2012 Theatre Review: The Trojan Women (Syracuse University Drama)
ED2012 3/5 Reviews ED2012 Theatre Reviews
This is a solid production of Seneca’s The Trojan Women. Syracuse University Drama ably capture the timelessness of the piece’s themes, utilising modern costumes and drawing parallels between the text and the recent history of America; the program denotes the setting as being “near the smouldering ruins of fallen towers” and at one point a character is threatened with waterboarding. This works well, helping make what is a 2000 year old, relentlessly tragic play both accessible and enjoyable for modern audiences. As a whole the acting on display is efficient, but without often truly hitting the heights of greatness. Some cast members are definitely stronger than others though; Alyssa Castellano delivers a standout performance as the grieving mother Andromache.
Quaker Meeting House, 6-11 Aug, 8.15pm tw rating 3/5 | [Iain Martin]
To Chekhov with Love
Written and directed by Celia Madeoy Presented by Syracuse University Department of Drama at the Quaker Meeting House, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2014, Scotland
To Chekhov With Love: Afterplay and The White Peacock (Two One-Act Plays)
by Stuart Mckenzie on 8th August 2014
From the critically acclaimed SU Drama company comes a double play performance that combines Brien Friel’s Afterplay and an original piece named The White Peacock. One play is brilliant; one play is terrible. But would you believe that the cast-written play trumps the Irish behemoth?
What could have easily been a four-star performance is ruined as Afterplay tarnishes the momentum of The White Peacock.
Opening with traditional Russian folk music, arranged and performed by Olga and Felix Ivanoff, The White Peacock begins with three mysterious women, known only as “the actresses,” who express their undying love for Anton Chekhov by listing his preferences and pet hates, echoing in a sing-song, synchronised chorus. Their lyrical voices are stopped short by the introduction of Olga Knipper, the only wife of Chekhov, who shared a short-lived marriage with the Russian playwright.
As a standalone play, The White Peacock is somewhat difficult to follow if one is unfamiliar with Chekhov’s life and works; the exclusive nature of the play can seem intimidating at times and leave one feeling slightly confused. However, even the most theatre-ignorant person can appreciate the talent of the actors and their power in creating vividly real characters, with particular praise going to writer and star Celia Madeoy as Olga. With a clear structure, The White Peacock is highly original and invites a whole new perspective to the life of Anton Chekhov.
The same cannot, however, be said for the second piece of the night: Afterplay. With little character development, Brian Friel’s drama is dull and unengaging and can only be fully appreciated in the context of Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, which Afterplay continues on from. The drama centres upon Andrey from Three Sisters and Sonya from Uncle Vanya in their encounter in a café and the small talk they make. The lack of conflict or any discernable plot leads to a fifty-minute slog of boredom until the discussion of Andrey’s life secret, but this arrives far too late to redeem the remainder of the act.
Perhaps it is wrong to blame the actors for their part. Certainly, both Leslie Noble and Joseph Whelan as Sonya and Andrey respectively are skilled enough to make the acting in Afterplay creditable. To give further credit where it is due, the Quaker Meeting House uses a rising stand that allows all audience members a perfect view of the stage, whilst the lighting in both plays is covered effectively well by the sound and technician expert Susannah Baron.
The use of Russian language and music adds to the production’s professionalism, whilst the slide show is effective in helping one keep up with the relevant history of Chekhov. That said, the choice of Brian Friel’s drama precludes a memorable evening. Call me unsophisticated, but listening to a discussion about mouldy brown bread, trees and cold tea for an hour is as tedious as it is pointless.
atomies
To Chekhov With Love
Posted on 8 August 2014 by atomies
The White Peacock
Written and directed by Celia Madeoy Presented by Syracuse University Department of Drama at the Quaker Meeting House on 7 August 2014
A strong central performance by Celia Madeoy as Olga Knipper (affectionately called “Knipschitz” by Chekhov, who also signs off one letter with “Big kiss, my little doggie”), whose relationship with the playwright is a complex mix of emotional and professional ties.
She pleads: Love me a little — I need it. A couple of lines later she apologizes for being “clingy” and yet I’d already concluded that she was nothing of the sort — that “I need it” was delivered by a woman who already had her own identity bound up in her acting and her own work. She is no groupie hanging around a star of the theatre, but a significant player herself, bringing the work to life on stage. (And what life! The original productions played to packed houses in Moscow — audiences running into the thousands. Unfortunately, this production, despite its merits, attracted an audience of only half a dozen, not untypical for even good Fringe shows.)
This theme of work is key — everyone has something to contribute, even the three unnamed actresses who mill around Olga, bringing a little confusion to the piece. It’s sometimes not clear who they’re meant to be or whose words they’re speaking, which might actually be in keeping with the line about women liking gin or vodka, “the clear ones” that can be tippled before lunch (a rule ignored by Blanche DuBois!).
Madeoy is encased in a fine-looking, black, period dress that is a physical restraint (and no doubt a nightmare to wear on a hot day in a small venue) and a counterpoint to the emotionally candid revelations of her character:
It’s like he’s touching me when he talks.
The sensuality is all in the intonation and the unexaggerated but expressive gestures — no bare flesh needed! (The opposite was the case in the next show we saw.)
Apparently, Chekhov loved three things (including white peacocks and antique maps of America) and he hated three things (including crying children and raspberry jam).
The final, poignant line:
Don’t dare cough.
Afterplay
By Brian Friel Directed by Celia Madeoy Presented by Syracuse University Department of Drama at the Quaker Meeting House on 7 August 2014
The time shifts forward from around 1900 to 1922, when two refugee characters from Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters — Sonya (Yelena’s step-daughter) and Andrey (the brother) — meet by chance in a café. It’s entirely apt that these fictions are themselves rather good at creating their own fictions, especially Andrey, who hopes to impress Sonya with his career as a violinist in an orchestra playing La Bohème. Joseph Whelan is plausibly dressed and looks the part, and talks about the hardships of a whole day spent rehearsing (all those hours on a hard seat make for a numb bottom — not unlike the effects of the five-hour journey we’d just endured from London to Edinburgh).
Poor Andrey misjudges his audience when he boasts how their Mimi is stunningly beautiful, and only 19! “Good for her!” is Sonya’s reply, a dry compliment delivered through a gritted smile. Sonya, who has been in love with Dr Astrov for 23 years, cannot compete with such youth. Leslie Noble invests her character with a lively and yet restrained desperation — she faces returning to an empty house, dripping eaves, and machines rusting in the yard, to “an endless tundra” of loneliness. Both her and Whelan’s performances are compelling.
The theme of the importance of a working life continues into this play, with Sonya more than capable of running the estate, unlike Uncle Vanya, who wouldn’t let her take over because she was a woman. Vanya is the kind of man who positive he’s right, with “absolutely no conviction.”
Andrey describes his three sisters as living life as if they were in a waiting room, which, again rather tactlessly, is exactly Sonya’s experience. No wonder she has a little bottle of vodka stashed in her bag, which she brings out surreptitiously when Andrey’s not looking — and then she offers him some when he returns.
Just as she is trying to muster a little courage to face her return home, she decides to stay for the opening night, which is when she discovers the extent of Andrey’s deception. He calls them “my fictions”; she has another phrase: “bloody lies.”
It was never going to work out between these two anyway: she still adores Astrov, who doesn’t believe in God but does believe in the perfectability of man (just like Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard). The Chekhovian joke here is that the two specimens in front of us are far from claiming such a state for themselves, and it’s inconceivable how they could go about achieving anything remotely resembling perfection. Andrey is a busker, and Sonya has lost the love of her life to Yelena, and they are both sympathetic characters.
This entry was posted in Quaker Meeting House.
Saturday 9 August 2014 | By Charlotte Taylor
ED2014 Theatre Review: To Chekhov With Love (Syracuse University Department Of Drama)
ED2014 3/5 Reviews ED2014 Theatre Reviews
‘To Chekhov with Love’ is exactly what one would expect: an homage to Chekhov, celebrating him and the characters he crafted. The production consists of two plays: ‘The White Peacock’, based on his love letters, and ‘Afterplay’, in which Sonya (Uncle Vanya) and Andrey (Three Sisters) meet. ‘Afterplay’ is undoubtedly the stronger of the two, as the former often feels tediously sycophantic towards an author who is already celebrated enough. Nonetheless, the overall production is actually rather engaging, thanks to some well-honed performances from Leslie Noble and Joseph Whelan, who seem to inhabit their roles like a second skin. Although solid enough, the lingering issue with this production is – is it necessary?
Quaker Meeting House, until 9 Aug. tw rating 3/5 | [Charlotte Taylor]
All Through the Night
by Aron Penczu on 9th August 2014
Shirley Lauro’s drama All Through the Night opens badly, but it gets better. It begins with clumsy exposition: a stern teacher’s every lesson tells us only about the Third Reich. History? We learn how the Germans were ‘stabbed in the back’ at Versailles. Music? ‘We will become fiery Conquerors!/ And the Reich in Triumph will shine!’ We are helpfully informed that the Party is taking over every girl’s organization in Germany, that the Party can open mail, tap phones, and check medical records (and more) to find suspected dissidents. If the play weren’t 13 years old, you’d swear these were Snowden parallels.
Syracuse’s University’s production, on the whole, is good. The costumes are convincing, and the acting, if uneven, has notable highlights
Fortunately, this is soon over, and we move on with the difficult, affecting tale of four women’s passage into adulthood. The fairy tale-frame works well: Ludmilla, our narrator, prompts the cast to their slow reminiscences. The story’s stubborn unwillingness to suit her ‘happily ever after’ vision allows it to testify to the complexities of life.
There is complexity in the characters, too. Gretchen (Allison Fifield) is enthusiastic about National Socialism until Kristallnacht strips her of her illusions. Both her self-serving, self-deluding enthralment and subsequent disenchantment are understandable and deeply human. Like the hospital director (Brady Richards) she is a basically decent person living in a world that demanded monstrous things of her — a case study for Arendt’s banality hypothesis.
All Through the Night has moments of achievement and promise.
And Syracuse’s University’s production, on the whole, is good. The costumes are convincing, and the acting, if uneven, has notable highlights: Taylor Anderson as the schoolmistress; Iniki Mariano as a truly sadistic Nazi; Brady Richards, whose German accent is perfect even when he’s angry. And there are moments of hair-raising intensity. In one compelling scene Angelika (Meredith Bechtel) is forced to strip into her underclothes onstage: its painful intimacy marks it as one of the most effective in the play. The projection of arch titles isn’t always felicitous — ‘The Lord Giveth, the Lord Taketh Away’ finds Angelika in a concentration camp — but images of Ecuadorean artist Oswaldo Guayasamín’s work are used to powerful effect.
The natural gravity of All Through the Night’s subject matter, however, is undermined by its clumsy navigation of languages. If the German accents are mostly good, though unnecessary — particularly considering Angelika and Gretchen’s frankly American voices — the replacement of simple words with their German cognates, like ‘und’ for ‘and’ and ‘mutter’ for ‘mother’, is gratuitous and rather mystifying, not to mention grating. Even worse is the reduction of tenses to the present erroneous (‘We both be sent to camp!’): does this imply that the Germans are inexplicably telling their story in broken English, or that they don’t speak German themselves?
All Through the Night is a play with a purpose: to draw attention to the previously under-examined plight of gentile women under the Third Reich. One might be forgiven for being uneasy about this kind of thing, fearing that a sense of social duty can distort aesthetic judgements. But, it’s also true that this kind of purpose takes writers to fresh places. Which is to say: All Through the Night has moments of achievement and promise. If only it were a little subtler.