Curtain Call

Wild night

By Jay Weitz

In pre-WWII Europe, the kleinkunst movement — literally "small art " — rebelled against the commercial and high art of its time with an ideological and sexual ferocity that would be familiar to any avant-gardist since. That aesthetic continues to echo through our own time, as anyone who's ever been to a performance at the Wexner Center can attest.

So it was much more than merely an academic exercise for the 10 master of fine arts students behind OSU's Wild Stages: Kabarett MFA. They researched and re-created an evening's entertainment, culling cabaret material from the four decades before the Nazis' rise to power in 1933 and adding a few original sketches in the same spirit.

The result is cheeky, smart and, in its own unstuffy way, educational. It may be everything that serious theater in a university setting should be: at once a vital history lesson, a timeless political statement and a thoroughly entrancing performance.

And who better to direct such a creature than John Giffin? Giffin is Columbus' living, breathing and dancing connection to that historical heritage — particularly via his association with Pina Bausch and her Danztheater Wuppertal — and his hands are all over this production.

By the time the audience begins to enter, the actors are already about their work, posing, cavorting, lying around in drunken stupors. An air raid marks the start of the performance proper. Soon, straight out of the Toulouse-Lautrec paintings walks Aristide Bruant in his sombrero and scarf, and he commences to insult the audience.

In the part of the cabaret owner and performer, Dwayne Blackaller sings one of Bruant's songs and then one of his own, "Complicite," which indicts us all for our silence in the face of things to which we should object.

We hear poems, songs and plays by several of the contributors to the French, German, Swiss, Russian and Austrian cabaret scenes. Surely the most famous is Bertolt Brecht, whose "Ballad of Marie Sanders," sung by Virginia Logan, tells the fate of a woman who slept "with the wrong breed of men" in a city where everyone knows "who does what and to whom."

Scott Wilson makes a creepily innocent impression singing "Aunticide" by Frank Wedekind. Dressed in short pants and a beribboned hat, Wilson tells of killing his aunt for her money, transforming himself from shy child to murderer in the beat of a heart. "Excerpts from 'The Dreaming Boys'" by Oskar Kokoschka is like a black-lit version of one of his expressionist paintings come to life, full of flying fish and skeletal humans.

You'll be tickled to learn that Groucho Marx's tattooed lady had her origins in "Lydia Smith," by the German satirist Kurt Tucholsky. As performed and personified by Raymond Caldwell, she becomes a walking historical mural.

Julie Ann McMillan does seductive justice to "A Little Attila," Tucholsky's tongue-in-cheek ode to the softer side of tyrants: "What I'd give to be marryin' a barbarian." On the flip side of the male reputation, Kiana Harris urges us to "Chuck Out the Men," by German composer Friedrich Hollaender.

Hollaender is also responsible for the chillingly relevant "Munchhausen," which concludes Wild Stages. Performed by the entire ensemble, which also includes Bruno Lovric, Johamy Morales, Jessica Podewell, Kal Poole and pianist Susan Chess, it is a tribute to leaders who lie to us and the people who pretend to believe them.

The chorus begins with chants of "Lies, lies, lies," but as the final iteration is reached, the music goes silent, allowing the audience to finish it in their heads. How amazing that the topical pieces of the early 20th century remain as alive in the early 21st. And how equally amazing that this cast brings it all to life with such skill.

Earlier in the evening, the poem "Cocaine" by Sebastian Droste included the line "Use your fury and turn it into beauty." That's more than "small art." That's the big idea.

May 8, 2008

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