THEATER - Stadttheater's "Slipped Disc" and "The Woman Before"

What happens when an already experimental theater (the HERE Arts Center) teams with the even edgier GTA (German Theater Abroad) program? Two US premieres of wild, boundary-pushing German works, three symposiums on the role of theater, four new staged readings, and the mission statement "no fun, no profit, no previews." This is Stadttheater, a month-long showcase that's as likely to impress as it is to disturb.

Featuring remarkable control of stagecraft (even when ill-used to obfuscate), these shows are likely to inspire directors and playwrights simply from the wide variety of approaches to storytelling and production. This is dialogue-opening material, and not just because certain effects will make your jaw drop. However, for the casual theatergoer, each hour-long show inevitably grows tedious or annoying -- the price of throwing so many darts at the wall. Still, the quality of work, at least on a visual level (the translations are sometimes uneven, or the narrative style too thick) merits the attention of all theatergoers on the lookout for an experience (that all too rare effect of modern theater).

-- Slipped Disc
The stronger (or simply more relatable) of the two mainstage Stadttheater productions, Slipped Disc - A Study of the Upright Walk looks at the inner lives of five office drones. The conclusion, which is also the impetus for the entire show, is that the modern worker is an emasculated creature, one who lives by the will of their whimsical and often cruel boss. Quitting, in the world of Slipped Disc, would accomplish nothing: they'd simply be unemployed (for there is no shortage of labor). And so these five people lap up humiliation after humiliation, all of which is artfully displayed by literal knives in the back or metaphorical displays of pathos that include eating toilet paper (i.e., shit). When they return to their office floor (where they are surrounded on two sides by audience members), they quickly take it out on each other, defining themselves by the cruelties they inflict on others.

For instance, Kretzky (a suave Sanjit De Silva) laughs off every little embarrassment as if it's a joke, and it's a pleasure to watch his smiling facade dissolve as he gloats in one aside about how he'll get his co-workers fired. (The delight is watching this second layer of reality, the one we normally repress, rise to the surface.) Hufschmidt (John Summerour), on the other hand, physically abuses the others, in particular Kruse (a gleefully pathetic Ron Domingo), before he too loses his facade, at one point devolving into a growling dog. Schmitt and Kristensen (Danielle Skraastad and Andrea Ciannavei) play the two women: one confident and belittling, the other hopeful yet hopeless. The contrasts are well illustrated by director Simone Blattner, who artfully makes the action too close for comfort.

Much as this violence is admirable, Blattner has a habit for belaboring certain points. Those uncomfortable moments where a joke has gone on for too long often stretch on (and on) into the artificial. It isn't viscerally uncomfortable, it's just dull. For example, when Kristensen gathers the characters together to air their complaints, the five actors stand there, silent and complacent, as if running out a clock rather than actually having nothing to say. (This is also how the play opens: to sit down, you must walk across the stage, around the immobile actors, and onto an elevated portion of the set.) Ingrid Lausund's script (translated by Henning Bochert) isn't very deep to begin with; attempting to draw a deeper significance out of it, or to make the words (or lack thereof) more resonant doesn't always work. But when it does (mostly if an actor's charisma sustains it), it's effective: Kruse's lengthy acceptance of the fact that Hufschmidt slaps him around for no reason grows more and more pathetic, until we are drowning in pity.

We can easily be any one of these spineless characters (thankfully, none are caricatures), and Slipped Disc does well to remind us that we can more easily talk our way into acceptance of circumstance than out of a situation.

-- The Woman Before
The Woman Before, on the other hand, reminds us of and tells us nothing. It is a show discontent with being a show, and quickly spirals out of control into performance art (some of which is admittedly entertaining). It is like a postmodern hard rock, perpetually (and ambiguously) angry, and not afraid to show it. And, rather than smashing the instruments after the concert, The Woman Before prefers to deconstruct itself during the performance itself.

The show opens simply enough in a hallway littered with boxes; Claudia (Cynthia Mace) has left the bathroom to ask her husband Frank (Roland Marx) about voices she heard, when suddenly she picks up a box, revealing Romy Vogtlander (Christen Clifford). When is a box not a box? When it's a door. Director Daniel Fish finds many other artsy uses for the boxes in this wide, horizontal space, too, but none are as effective as this first moment of surprise. Suddenly, the lights shift, and we're watching a scene five minutes earlier, between Frank and Romy, who reminds him of the vow he made when they were lovers 24 summers ago: to love her forever. Again, a promising start, and an interesting narrative device, neither of which will be used as well again.

The constant shifts in perspectives, to allow different characters to tell this story, makes for some interesting and disjointed theater, but all the skipping around in time never actually goes anywhere (except deeply into metaphor) and more often than not simply seems like a way of making the old seem new (and the ridiculous seem plausible). Playwright Roland Schimmelpfenning (translated here by David Tushingham), is famous in Germany, and this emboldens him to take fantastic risks, the price of which is the plot itself, followed shortly after by the characters (who, after a while, simply become narrators or disconnected observers).

The Woman Before might serve as a parable for modern disconnect in society (we keep everything boxed away), but with each treadmill-like step forward (movement without progress), the play becomes riddled with metaphor until it serves as nothing more than a warning to other playwrights. We can accept stage directions being read -- even by characters involved in the scene, and even when they're supposed to be dead -- because it allows the minimalism of action itself. The full nudity (prudes beware) is acceptable as well, it conveys an openness that makes the violence it accompanies all the more tragic. Even the stilted, melodramatic dialogue works -- to a point -- because it serves the repetition of scenes and uses verbal cues as landmarks. But that all these devices should serve no greater good beyond the glib display of what is possible onstage . . . it seems needlessly cruel.

The Woman Before brings Sarah Kane to mind in its reckless energy and presentation, and the direction is admirable in that it achieves (at least during Romy's box-smashing mood swing) a total loss of control. However, there's no room for error when attempting to show chaos (paradoxical as that may sound). When actors start to trip over their lines and stumble across the stage, it looks slovenly, not chaotic, and the mania is clearly rehearsed (and off-pitch). If there is tragedy, it is in the ill-explored parallel of the father's son, Andi (Jeremiah Miller), and his last evening with his girlfriend, Tina (Diana Ruppe), whom he has also promised to love forever. But Tina is kept in the periphery, where she delivers monologues via a microphone, practically exploited in an attempt to deliver some of the author's grand and poetic statements about love. Stuck in the background, along with the plot and characters, the real thrust of The Woman Before remains difficult to fall in love with.