On Stage
KANFER, STEFAN
On Stage TWO APPROACHES TO TRAGEDY By Stefan Kanfer "The test of a good religion," maintained G.K.Chesterton, "is whether you can make a joke about it." By that elastic standard, Roman...
...Wary, Mark asks why the sudden gesture of friendship...
...As the two men skirmish and jockey for position, layers of personality are peeled away with surprising effect...
...Shakespeare deserves better, and so does the ensemble of Zulus who contributed such disciplined fervor...
...Why not indeed...
...For decades now Catholic satirists have made fun of their clerics, ranging from the nunsuch comedy Sister Maty Ignatius Explains It All To You, to the current revival of Mass Appeal at the Irish Repertory Theater...
...Even those who knew Macbeth by heart had trouble understanding the proceedings...
...In the last two years alone, movie theaters have exhibited a mod Romeoand Juliet, a Hamlet more suggestive of Errol Flynn than of Laurence Olivier, and an Othello who seemed to rise directly from an American ghetto...
...That was then, this is now, when he occupies himself by renouncing worldly pleasures and denouncing churchly hypocrisies...
...Playwright Bill C. Davis is a moralist manqué, and his mockeries of the Mother Church are accompanied by feelings of wistful regret and yearnings for improvement...
...There was no denying the throaty appeal of the large cast, or the hypnotic quality of the drums and the incantatory power of the songs...
...Saul Bellowis supposed to have asked, in defense of college courses in Western Civ...
...In between, Jack Lemmon appeared in a catastrophic film, now deservedly forgotten...
...At about the same time Napoleon was emerging from obscurity, an unknown Zulu soldier rose from the ranks to become the most feared warrior of his tribe...
...Can't I just listen...
...It is a commonplace that the Bard is universal, and that the canon can cross borders with undiminished quality and force...
...A partial answer came at the Lincoln Center Festival's recent presentation of Umabatha, the Zulu Macbeth, prior to its national and European tours...
...Mark: Uh...
...Now a new and, as far as he is concerned, totally irrelevant question has arisen: "Shall we allow women to be priests...
...Will Tim protect the acolyte from higher authorities when they threaten the priest with exile to Iowa...
...Mark, it turns out, is a reformed voluptuary who committed as many sins as possible with as many people as possible...
...Father Tim permits a few harmless queries from his parishioners, then attempts a return to the scriptures...
...As William Shakespeare knew, however, and Welcome Msomi should have been aware, all this needed to be conveyed with words as well as gestures...
...We have also been treated to productions of Shakespeare in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, Japanese, and mime, and we are none the worse for it...
...What inspired me to choose Macbeth," Msomi has stated, "is that the intrigue, plots and counterplots of the Scottish clans were almost a carbon copy of the drama that took place with the early nations of Africa...
...This production, launched in Johannesburg, was adapted—or, more precisely, shortchanged—by the South African Welcome Msomi, who also directed this unique interpretation...
...For Duncan read Dangane (Lawrence Masondo), for the teetering Macbeth read Mabatha (Thabani Patrick Tshanini ), for the treacherous Lady Macbeth read Ka Madonsela (Dieketseng Mnisi), for the Three Witches read The Insangomas (S'bongile Ngqulunga, Promise S'thembile Jali, Mary-Anne Busi Mchunu), and so on down the line— Umabatha featured a cast of 56...
...When the answers come, they prove to be witty, bitter and almost always revealing...
...Moreover, the venue chosen for Umabatha—the vast, zirconic New York State Theater at Lincoln Center—served to dwarf the scenery-free production, rather than to enhance it...
...For an iconoclastic young man, Mark Dolan (Paul McGrane), rises to his feet and demands to be heard...
...By that elastic standard, Roman Catholicism— to which he converted—is indeed an excellent faith...
...This is one of the few areas where stupid is smart...
...Its themes of authority and revolt are universal, and its humor seems as vigorous today as it was back in 1980 when Milo O' Shea and Eric Roberts comprised the cast...
...Make up another tragedy...
...As to Davis, for 17 years he has been trying to shed the title of Promising Playwright, but nothing he has written has come up to his first major work...
...David Raphel's set design does much with little, as do David Toser's costumes...
...This version is based on a more retrievable history than Macbeth's...
...Tim: You're not supposed to...
...The only problem with lunatics is they don't know how to survive...
...I do...
...Clearly, a new era has commenced and he doesn't care for it at all...
...Mark believes that women should—no, must—be admitted to the priesthood...
...This graying priest is a Hibernian smoothie, all bonhomie and benignity as he preaches to his unseen upper-middle-class congregation...
...The furious priest summons the disturber of the peace to his office...
...Why do you have to say something...
...These were about as brief, and as childishly simple, as the titles in Chaplin's silent two-reelers ("Mabatha is concerned about the Insangomas' prediction...
...With any luck, the touring company may find smaller and more appropriate arenas...
...They are directed by the estimable Charlotte Moore, who has overseen 12 splendid Irish Repertory Theater productions...
...Why not a Zulu rendition...
...He is about to deliver one of his patented "Three C Sermons: Current Crises in Catholicism...
...He offers an unexpected hand...
...Let's give it a try...
...My mother passed away last night, Father...
...Coleman, a Dubliner, delivers just the right mix of complacency and self-doubt, and the Englishman McGrane conveys anguish in a flawless American accent...
...Mark: Why...
...He is a seminarian aiming for the priesthood, and the alteration of all he sees around him...
...Mark: I'd rather not say anything...
...Tim: Or you could say he, or she, went straight to heaven...
...Tim: If the mother was young, you could say, 'You can have another.' Mark: Like an hors d'oeuvre...
...In essence Umabatha is a straight retelling of the original blood-soaked tragedy, replacing the swirling mists of Scotland with the subtropical heat of the veldt, medieval armor with animal skins, swords with assegais, and blank verse with Zulu dialogue and African chants...
...A worldly ennui accompanies the homily—Father Tim has seen too many religious emergencies in his life, too many threats to his vocation...
...In arguing with Mark he comes to realize that the impetuous, outspoken youth may be of inestimable value...
...Mark: My baby died in his crib last night...
...But why this one...
...He never gets there...
...Keep it simple and stupid...
...The older man attempts to quiet the younger one before Catholic higher-ups expel the lad for good...
...As Father Tim interprets the role of priest, bromides are desiderata, and original thinking is as unwelcome as Satan: Tim: Your responsibility as a priest is to bring common grief to the heights of the inconsolable by saying something inane...
...Those who came to the play with no knowledge of Shakespeare left with nothing but a memory of vigorous ensemble dancing, spectacular costumes of fur and feathers, as well as scenes of shouting, tears and a series of whistles reminiscent of Harpo Marx in his manic phase...
...im: But you have to say something...
...No matter...
...In Macbeth, Shakespeare said it all...
...Tim: Now—presuming you knew the deceased and she was over 70, obviously you'd say, 'Well, she had a good life.' On the other hand if she'd been ill, you'd say, 'It was a merciful release.' Mark: Even I could think of something better than that...
...It is a credit to Davis that in his hands these parochial questions become vital concerns...
...But Mass Appeal is more than an exercise in autobiography and criticism...
...Can the Church be saved from itself...
...long exchanges were left untranslated...
...No doubt the play contains a strong element of the personal—its author has played the role of Mark in at least three companies...
...In a country where animism constitutes one of the major religions, the idea of witches forecasting the future had a special relevance and credibility...
...By a combination of battlefield genius and personal intimidation, Shaka turned himself into a symbol of omnipotence, a natural leader who seemed to be touched by the immortal spirits of the forest—until the epochal day he was brought down by assassins in his own court...
...After all, two of the three people who attended Jesus in his final agonies were female, Mary and Mary Magdalene: "his mother, and an exhooker...
...Still, none of them will be fully effective until a text is worked out and presented either with a narrator speaking English, or a series of supertitles that convey more than fortune cookies or bumper stickers...
...The two-man comedy-drama opens with a sermon delivered by Father Tim Farley (Tony Coleman...
...Only a short while ago, he complains, the pressing query was, "Shall we chew the Host or let it melt in our mouths...
...In an uncertain attempt to communicate plottwists, Msomi wrote supertitles, displayed far above the stage...
...Father Tim Farley is not quite the bibulous and shallow soul he appears to be, though...
...Because," explains Tim, "the Church needs lunatics—you're one of those priceless lunatics that come along every so often and make the Church alive...
...This is hardly what Father Tim wanted or expected on a sleepy Sunday morning...
...They have come and gone, and here he remains, with his office, his cases of sparkling Burgundy and his Mercedes...
...This time out, two foreign actors take the roles, and acquit themselves with honor...
...Tim: No...
...The difference between this play and others of the genre lies not in its jokes, but in its subtext...
...Where is the Zulu Shakespeare...
...Ah well, in the words of the original author in the original play, "Things without all remedy/ Should be without regard: what's done is done...
...Can Mark modify his remarks without compromising his principles...
...Hit me with a tragedy...
...Mass Appeal is worth any number of broken vows and failed expectations...
...There it is revealed that Mark is no ordinary Christian agitator...
Vol. 80 • August 1997 • No. 13
