Machinal
The Other Side Theatre at the Back Door Theater,
4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 938-1482.
8 pm Thursday-Saturdays, 4 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 23.
$5-$7.50.
Expressionist drama was the open-mike slam of the early 20th
century. As a movement, it was a revolution of subjectivism--reacting
against authoritarianism, especially in the stifling concept
of family. To its German adherents, expressionist drama battled
against the familial and societal blights directed upon the
individual, by both presenting the world through an intensely
subjective lens and by demanding the validity of individual
vision. Disdaining paper's confines, expressionist poets took
the stage to deliver their cries of anger and protest, creating
a performance art dubbed schrei (scream): the outward
manifestation of an interior monologue. As powerful as these
pieces were, their immediacy often made them ephemeral.
What saved expressionism from becoming a footnote to theater
history was Eugene O'Neill's experiments with the form.
His Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape steered
expressionist drama away from the shoals of hysteria toward
psychological depth. Following O'Neill came Elmer Rice's
The Adding Machine and Kaufmann and Connelly's delightful
Beggar on Horseback. Though social protest exists
in all of these plays, they lack the potent German attack
on the structure of "family as authoritarian playpen" and
never present a total condemnation of society. One exception
is Sophie Treadwell's Machinal.
Treadwell was one of the great American journalists of
the early century. She followed Ambrose Bierce to Mexico
to interview Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution,
then left for Europe to immerse herself in World War I's
trenches. If Machinal seems more German than American,
it is, perhaps, because Treadwell shared the German experience
of authoritarianism gone mad. Treadwell's play is the tale
of an Everywoman who is force-marched through her life from
one expectation to another. She must be a dutiful daughter,
a good office drudge, bait for marriage, a good wife, a
good mother. In short, she must inhabit the great women's
prison of patriarchy.
Treadwell's play is episodic, carrying her character through
each stage. In Treadwell's play the schrei is reborn.
"Is nothing mine?" the young woman demands to know. The
answer is no, for even her death will be stage-managed.
Machinal premiered on Broadway in 1928, and was a
great success. Then the play vanished, virtually without
a trace, and Treadwell became forgotten.
The Other Side Theater's current production is part of
a noble attempt to place Machinal back into the world's
repertory, and as evinced in the company's handling of the
piece, that's exactly where the play belongs. After her
bold production of Ubu Roi last season, Charmian
Creagle is fast becoming one of Portland's brightest young
directors. Here she has almost complete control of Treadwell's
text. Where she fails is in the ability to maintain the
play's mood throughout, especially in the eighth episode,
The Law (why not have the two judges speak in unison?),
and, to a certain extent, in her management of Mother in
the second episode in which Creagle allows a distracting
sympathy for the character.
One of the exciting elements in this play is to see how
The Other Side and the Liminal performance group are linking.
Creagle's physical score greatly benefits from Amanda Boekelheide's
movement work, while the striking sound-noisescape of John
Berendzen is slyly interfused with the text. Liminal's excellent
Jeff Marchant also takes on a number of roles. The rest
of Creagle's cast is equally impressive. Other Side regulars
Sean Doran and James Moore continue to grow in stature as
actors. Doran is superb as the businessman-husband, rigid
and menacing. Grace Carter, Tom Galup and Sharon Mann are
all assets to this production, as is Shuhe, who has finally
been given decent work.
Gore Vidal has said that "art is energy shaped by intelligence,"
and nothing could better describe the work of Vanessa Rios
y Valles. As the Young Woman, Rios y Valles gives a powerful
performance that is driven by the actor's total intellectual
and emotional commitment to her character's "truth." Few
young actors so boldly inhabit a character, creating performances
that are full of discovery for both audience and actor,
and that are like reports back from a newly chartered soul.
The expressionist theorist Paul Kornfeld coined the term
seelendrama--souldrama. Rios y Valles is a souldramatist.
With this production of Treadwell's lost masterpiece, The
Other Side continues to be one of Portland's important companies.
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Willamette Week | originally
published September 29,
1999
|
