There is a
point late in Book-It Reps
luminous adaptation of late 19th century novelist Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" where her protagonist, Edna Pontellier (Book-It
Co-Artistic Director Myra Platt),
makes a startling pronouncement. Arguing with a friend, Edna rejects as
intolerable the notion that the ultimate role of women is to subjugate their
will to the service of raising her children, "I would give up the
unessential," she avouches, "I would give my money, I would give my
life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself." The words ring with
defiance and certainty, to the shock and disbelief of her companion. It's a
moment charged with dramatic intensity, rife with unspoken longing and a barely
concealed contempt for the societal shackles of which Edna has only recently
become aware; the rebellious battle cry of a fully conscious human being
asserting that the definition of a purposeful life can only be determined by
the person living it.
Chopin's
story, published at the turn of the 20th century, was rejected by critics who
were as shocked as Edith's confidante by its assertions of female autonomy,
sexual liberalism, and its "scandalous" rejection of the central
tenets of then prevailing ideals of "True Womanhood"; the resulting
firestorm of critical vituperation it engendered essentially ended her career
as novelist. More than half a century would pass before those seeking out the
cultural and literary antecedents to the modern feminist movement would
rediscover Chopin's prescient novel, along with the works of her contemporaries
Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and other women writers who dared to
question the prevailing attitudes and mores of their time.
This remount
of Book-it's production from their 1999-2000, sensitively and intelligently
directed by Jane Jones
cogently translates Chopin's lush, sensuous renderings of southern Louisiana
and Creole culture. But, as much as Jones, her cast and production staff
(Scenic Designer Greg Carter,
Lighting Designer Brian Healy,
Costumer Harmony Arnold and
Music Director Edd Key) are to
be credited with embodying the physicality of turn-of-the-century New Orleans
and its environs, it is their sublime realization of the book's indelible
characters, along with Chopin's controversial themes and evocative symbolism
that makes this work truly shine with inspired light.
Based loosely
on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, "The Awakening" tells Edith's
story in unsentimental terms, beginning with her gradual realization of a
soul-numbing sense of dissatisfaction with her life, engendered during a month
long summer holiday spent at a Gulf Coast resort. On Grand Isle, Edith's world
of confining domesticity slowly comes into focus, and throughout the course of
the story she strips away the social, cultural and moral restrictions that
heretofore have dictated the daily course of her life, emerging in the end,
like a butterfly from a chrysalis, as the fully-realized embodiment of her own
conscious desires. Although one may question the necessity for the rather
ignoble fate that awaits her at the end, there can be but little doubt that it
represents the supreme act of will, and in that ultimately, it is not the
manner of her death, but rather the journey of her life that makes Edith's
story so compelling. Jones, Platt and company make the journey well worth
taking. Doubtless a few grumbling souls will carp that it's little more than a
vanity piece, but if so it begs the question of why for example Platt doesn't
trod the boards more often. She brings a quiet dignity to her portrayal of the
disaffected Edith, and even in her character's moments of confusion and
frustration, when the whirlwind of emotions encapsulates her, she provides a
calm center of focus and attention that makes even the often troublesome
Book-It narrative declamatory style of presentation flow with a natural sense
of grace. In charting Edith's extrication from the suffocating straitjacket of
conjugal obligation and sexual repression, and into a liberating sense of the
awareness of her potential as a human being, Platt creates a memorably refined
characterization that anchors the production form beginning to end.
Hans
Altwies turns in another subtly
compelling performance, a near 180 shift from his recent portrayal of the
egomaniacal Iago in Seattle Shakes "Othello", this time conveying the
aspect of Edith's unrequited summer companion, Robert. In a way, the role does
lend itself to a sort of Shakespearean comparison, as Robert in his own way
takes on a role very similar to that of the Clown in "Twelfth Night",
an intelligent, witty, and desperately lonely young man who willfully
emasculates himself in order to be nearer the object of his own desire.
As Edith's
friend and confidante, Adele (Melinda Deane) creates a nice contrast to Platt's searching
discontent. Adele is the epitome of Victorian womanhood, willing to subvert
every aspect of her being into the care and nurturing of her children and
husband. At the other extreme is Lori Larsen's brittle, unabashedly cynical Mademoiselle
Reisz, whose cantankerous, unladylike nature is tolerated by her bourgeois companions for the simple reason that even they
recognize her superior abilities. Larson draws comic moments from Chace's
script like a cactus sucking water from the sere desert; often with little more
than an arched eyebrow and a deliciously expectant pause for effect.
Musical
Director Key has suffused the work with a vibrant succession of period and
regional musical styles such as Cajun jure, waltzes, even a bit of Chopin, and also makes liberal use of a
capella voices, in the manner of
traditional Acadian storytelling ballads. Television actress Cynthia Geary proves an adept singer in these musical narrative
passages, and the ensemble cast proves equally adept at lifting the songs
(written by Platt) with rich, soaring harmonies.
Arnold's airy,
at times nearly diaphanous costumes effortlessly transport us into the world of
late 19th century middle-class society, exquisitely lit under the sunny,
apricot skies of Healy's lighting effects, all of which play marvelously on
Carter's spare, imaginatively rendered set. It's an impressionistic rendering,
but one that allows the currents of Chace's script to flow and meander, like
the great bodies of water - the Mississippi and Gulf Stream -- that define this
part of the world to a great extent, carrying the audience along with a
seemingly lazy, yet ultimately implacable forcefulness to the play's
conclusion. As unsettling as that conclusion may be, at the same time, a sense
of hopefulness surges beneath it, as Edith is drawn further from the
superficial world of ornamentation and materialism toward a higher sense of
self-awareness and purpose. Likewise audiences will be carried out of the
theatre and into the world, as if on a riptide like that which draws the unwary
swimmer ever further out to sea.