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| Charlotte Salomon - self portrait |
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One woman shows are running rampant these days; likewise one man shows, but at Shakespeare and Company we are dealing with the Diva series and that means the women have the spotlight. The second offering at the Lenox, Massachusetts campus of the company is a play within a play about a play, performed by one woman who lived two-thirds of this triad. Her name is Penny Kreitzer and she was directed in a play by and about Charlotte Salomon, a young woman, an artist, who died during World War II. Kreitzer, who also co-authored the framework play and its internal elements, lived the role that she plays of Penny Kreitzer at two different theaters in 1973 and 1984. She and her friends have created a theater experience that must feel like constant therapy to the actress who not only relives a major moment in her own life, but who also lived the lives of the two women central to the inner play, Salomon and her step-mother, classical singer Paula Lindberg-Salomon.
Charlotte lived in Berlin; her mother was a suicide when the girl was nine; her grandmother who took her in to help protect her from the Nazis committed suicide as soon as the war broke out for real. As a refugee in France she painted more than a thousand pictures, including the 769 that comprised her "play" Leben? Oder Theater? Ein Singspiel (Life? Or Theater? A play with songs). The play and pictures survived in the home of a friend and are in a permanent display at the Joods Historiche Museum in Amsterdam.
Charlotte’s stepmother was a famous contralto, Paula Lindberg-Salomon. Their relationship was a tricky one, involving a man named Alfred Wolfsohn who coached Paula in voice and, according to the play within the play was also the lover of Charlotte. The principal plot point for framework play, other than the quality of Penny’s singing voice, was the inclusion of Wolfsohn in Charlotte’s play and whether it would be appropriate to exercise the right of exclusion, or call it by its other name if you prefer - censorship, in keeping him out of it, something desired by Paula.
Kreitzer plays all of these characters, and more; I counted ten but I may have missed one or two. Charlotte’s story covers just about 25 years in her life. Paula’s story concerning the rehearsals of her step-daughter’s play and its aftermath also covers about 25 years in her life (she was 103 when she died). Kreitzer’s tale has taken her 25 years through time from 1984 to the present. There is no mystery to the outer connection, but what is a wonder is the inner connection these three women have.
Part of that connection is the dramatic glue that holds things together throughout the one hour and ten minute play: the character of director Joyce Miller who is trying to rehearse the character Penny in the role of Charlotte. Joyce, for me, is the real central character here. She understands Penny’s difficulties with the role, especially under the circumstance of rehearsing in front of the girl’s step-mother who has come to Jerusalem to watch the production process. Joyce is kept hopping as Penny falters, fearful of offending Paula. Joyce is caught in a dilemma as Paula insists on critiquing every gesture and vocal inflection Penny brings to the part of Charlotte. Joyce is also caught in the vice-like grip of Paula’s insistence that Wolfsohn’s character be deleted, thereby leaving the play they are rehearsing with a major element lost and realizations unreachable.
Joyce’s growing frustration helps Penny create believable characters, so real that even Paula is subdued by her work. Paula’s anger and sense of humiliation over her teacher’s betrayal of her hard-won trust forces Joyce’s emotional hand and it is Penny, the character, who helps everyone including us understand that Joyce cannot abandon her children, her family within the walls of their workshop, which by the way is a bomb shelter in Jerusalem.
What we don’t see, I think, is the play created by Charlotte, but only the accidental elements of it that are necessary for Kreitzer's own play. Paula asks for more pictures from Charlotte’s ouvre and we ask the same thing. What we know of the girl is reflected in her words and about twelve or thirteen projections. In one of the best scenes in the play the nine year old girl tries on her new stepmother’s shoes, makeup and demeanor in an effort to get to know her. Here Kreitzer plays the child Charlotte, and that child’s conception of her new mother, along with her actual stepmother, and herself in commentary. It is the sort of magical instant transformation that Kreitzer handles brilliantly.
In a single, simple costume without fashion elements, using body language and subtle vocal changes, she manages to differentiate not just characters but periods of time. We know when she is in the immediate now and when she is in her own past. We know when she is male and when she is female, young and old. She makes those changes work the way a magician makes an elephant disappear right before your eyes.
The lighting by Greg Solomon and the open space set by Kiki Smith add to the theatrical magic of a solo performance embodying many folks. Jonathan Rest, who has helped to create the script directs Kreitzer and Solomon (lighting guy) perfectly in order to keep our interest focused on what is important here, the text and the actress that text is linked to like a chain-link fence when each diamond shaped hole contains a different image.
Is this worth your time? That is more difficult a question than "was Charlotte Salomon a brilliant artist and playwright." The hour and ten minutes does not fly by. So much is crammed into it that it feels like you’ve been in the theater a lot longer. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is that a thing at all? There are more questions brought into the forefront with this play than are answered or even answerable. This is an experience. That’s all that can be said of it.
◊06/03/09◊
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