Time and pacing and...
Die Olde English Subtitle Font!
First of all, I'd like to give Julie Taymor credit in that I don't feel an egotistic stamp all over the piece from her directing as I have felt, and which chafed from the director Robert Wilson in say, the opera Lohengrin at the Met. I do not find her work to be a self-conscious statement of herself that gets in the way. I think she serves the play, and did so in Lion King. Like Wilson she has used the spectacle inherent in Asian theatre to effect the piece with the use of great-sized visuals. Both have played with the concept of time as experienced by and conveyed to an audience during the performance. This technique is also copied from Asian theatre as in ancient Noh theatre and the more modern evolution of Japanese Butoh dance and it is a concept that director Anne Bogart also employs to great effect and is one of the reasons why I run to see her shows when I can.
The first half of Grendel is very slow paced. Eric Owens maintains extraordianary focus throughout, which helps keep you hooked, but I nearly dozed off a couple times. It was not Julie Taymor's directing so much as the pace inherent in the opera music itself, composed by Julie's significan other, Elliot Goldenthal. It's wonderful music, the whole thing reminded me of Wagner. I do wish here and there there were some more varied and quicker pacings, particulary there seem to be a lot of slow songs sung by Grendel. I don't tend to fall asleep at the theatre, but people were nodding off a bit around me as well during the first half. The show demands a very high attention span on the part of its audience, I think especially so having to look up and down for the subtitles in the very front.
So my advice, be prepared for the slow pace. Buzz up on caffeine aforehand. One coffee was not enough. Some of the dance procession is quite slow as well. Which is beautiful, and takes great skill on the part of the dancers, but this is not zippity do-dah Broadway fare for the kids. This is NOT The Lion King. I liked the Lion King, I saw it once in previews and that was enough. Grendel I would like to see again as it's much deeper.
The thing I would change about the piece if I could is the location and one of the fonts of the subtitles. I wish they ran them to the sides of the production outside the stage rather than up above as it crooks and fatigues your neck to try to look up and down from the front row, up for the subtitles above the stage and back down to the stage. If they moved the show to the Met Opera house where the titles are all on the seats in front of you that would solve the problem of their location.
Most important--jeez, get rid of that Old English style font that half the subtitles are it--it's a bitch to try to read and drives you blind. Just use the plain Times New Roman style font so you don't torture your poor audience.
I could understand about 80 percent of what was sung without the subtitles, probably more than your average sitter there, but the subtitles are useful and necessary, especially when a group is singing something, so the subtitles need to stay.
And one further note. As part of the "deconstructionism" present in the piece, Grendel occaisionally pipes up with some odd Americanisms and slang which kind of jar the piece in bringing it from mythic times to the present in a stylistic decision similar to Brechtian distanciation (verfremdung). Its effect creates a bit of discomfort in an audience to make them aware they are seeing a theatre piece and to break the verisimilitude, or the getting lost in the dream world created by the piece. I'm not a fan of this aspect of Brechtian theatre, some people love it. I want my verisimilitude dream without the politics jammed down your throat like I get in everyday culture. I don't like politics in church either and get up and walk out if it starts coming from the pulpit.
This intrusion was semi-wrapped up in the plot of the story in terms of the Shaper, the spin doctor of old. I also couldn't help getting an anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war vibe from the piece, whether it is meant to be there or no, which for me interfered with the classic nature of the piece. This conscious political intellectualism for me detracts from the genius the piece would be without it. It's a little different than the genius of Euripedes, who in The Trojan Women commented on politics of the time by recounting a tale of a hundred years prior in allegory. And the audience got it without being beaten over the head with verfremdung. In the end, though, when as foretold by the new seer Shaper, the arresting Beowulf arrives and conquers Grendel (conquering cynicism?), we are left with a hero and the glory of the myth after all. How strange. Almost as if we cannot get away from myth or hero, for myth and hero will out, like truth.
All in all, I find this show to be the MUST SEE of the season.
© 2006 nomdeplume by pseudonym, all rights reserved
Updated On: 7/12/06 at 03:23 PM
