Getty Villa Takes a Bold, New Step

One of my favorite fall, theater traditions is going to the Getty Villa. Almost every fall since 2006, I make a pilgrimage of sorts to the outdoor amphitheater in a Malibu cannon to experience a production of Greek or Roman theater.  

Looking back, some of the early productions were a bit shaky. Dwarfed by the oddly imposing facade of the museum and challenged by a lack of traditional theater mechanics (there are no wings per se), the whole production has to vanish each night so the museum can function as a museum (so no permanent sets), and a noise restriction in the canyon that made early productions a bit more quiet than heroic. Part of the joy of returning each year has been watching the Getty learn how to use their space — and take advantage of it. Each year, a new director or company has added to the vocabulary and learned a bit more about how to make that facade work for them rather than against them.

It’s been this beautiful marriage between a solid, stable vision (to breathe life into the classic Greek and Roman plays) paired with some remarkable visiting companies and playwrights. I think back to the remarkable work of SITI Company, Luis Alfaro’s chicano inspired Greek trilogy (which without the Getty may never have been born), productions by the Court Theatre and Round House Theatre, and even the goofy and irreverent work of the Troubies helping remind us that those ancient theater festivals ended with bawdy Satyr plays. And even the work that’s happened indoors during the weekend has fueled some of LA’s most exciting companies, like Nancy Keystone’s Critical Mass Performance Group and Four Larks.

This year’s production brings the Classical Theatre of Harlem production of Memnon. Before you run to your collection of Aeschylus or Sophocles to remember who wrote it and why it doesn’t ring a bell, let me save you the time. In an exciting step for the Getty, this is a wholly new text written by the playwright Will Power. He shares, “As far as source materials, there’s not much that exists. This is why writing and retelling the Greek Mythological story of Memnon is exciting.” 

Memnon, Greek myth holds, was the king of Ethiopia and a defender of Troy, “Though the story of Memnon is not as famous as that of Hector, Memnon is considered to be an equal of the Achaean hero Achilles, for although Hector had the fighting prowess, Achilles and Memnon were both demi-gods, born to mortal fathers and immortal mothers.” Will Power says his play draws on:

“The epic poem The Iliad, specifically the Robert Fagles translation, was incredibly helpful in terms of the poetic meter of epic poetry, as well as the understanding of other characters that are featured in our Memnon work such as Priam, Nestor, Helen, Antilochus, and Polydamas. The Iliad, of course, immediately precedes the Memnon tale, so it was very helpful as far as continuity as well.”
 
“I read the Histories by Herodotus which mentioned Memnon, but more importantly, gave me a sense of how the Greeks viewed ancient African culture.”

And perhaps most appropriately given the collection at the Getty, he was inspired by the depiction of Memnon on Ancient Greek vases.

This is an exciting new chapter for the Getty. Not only inspiring modern adaptations of the classics but also using the classical landscape to explore an entirely new play.

The only challenge with the Getty’s fall outdoor production is by the time I’m able to review it, it’s already sold out. Do yourself a favor, book a night to spend outdoors in a Malibu canyon with an ancient myth. You won’t regret it.

Memnon, a co-production of the Getty and the Classical Theatre of Harlem, plays at the Getty Villa in Malibu from September 5th through September 28th.

This is Anthony Byrnes Opening the Curtain on LA Theater for KCRW.

America's Favorite Fascist in Crevasse

The hook for Tom Jacobson’s play Crevasse is tantalizing. It’s 1938 and Leni Riefenstahl is coming to America to find distribution for her film Olympia mere months after Kristallnacht. The only studio head who will meet with her is Walt Disney. 

The frame that surrounds this historical meeting is the relationship between Ms. Riefenstahl and her press agent Ernst Jaeger, who, inconveniently, has ties to Hollywood and is just recently divorced from a Jewish wife. The play's drive begins with this trip to America and then traces, sort of, the aftermath.

As a playwright, Mr. Jacobson has often focused on historical events and characters and then imagined the drama that unfolds. Here, he certainly has fertile ground. A female filmmaker who defined the visual look of fascism — aestheticizing state power and shows-of-force with a skill and grace that’s terrifyingly ahead of its time (or maybe worse, perfectly suited for its time) — meeting with America’s favorite proto-fascist, Walt Disney.

It’s telling that Mr. Jacobson has his imagined Walt take a moment during their studio to explain the concept of the "Easter egg" in a work of art. In the play, Walt’s talking about the animators sneaking images of breasts into the animation but he could have just as easily been talking about the play itself. The studio tour is a set of Easter eggs and callbacks to Ms. Riefenstahl’s influences on Disney both real and imagined. If you’re a Disney fan, there’s a lot of material to mine. Unfortunately, Mr. Jacobsen doesn’t dig deep enough.

The play is hardly an indictment of Disney, far from it. Until the very end, which I’ll talk about in a second, Disney comes off as naive and problematic but hardly as an evil conspirator. His interest in Riefenstahl is almost technical. He admires her as an artist and almost pushes back at her politics — suggesting what remarkable work they could do together if she could leave Germany and the Reich behind. As for the character of Ms. Riefenstahl, the promise of grappling with a strong woman at the top of her field in the early days of cinema is reduced to a predictable sexuality and a concern for being confused with Marlene Dietrich.

Perhaps even more of a self-indictment, the play doesn’t really grapple with the role and morality of art in the face of fascism. How do we process that which is both beautiful and horrible? Is great art in pursuit of great evil still art? Or, if you want to be even more provocative, which is worse: portraying Nazis as they imagine themselves to be in trumped-up cinematic glory or sneaking anti-semitism into a cartoon about the three little pigs and spoon-feeding it to a population?

These questions go largely unconsidered.

Despite the moral certitude of the self-important sound cues, the piece not only doesn’t have a strong political or moral North Star. Its ending is a quick flurry of seemingly contradictory moral sentiments. In one instant, our German press agent is writing a multi-part indictment of Riefenstahl as a Nazi, in the next he’s appealing for the de-Nazification of Riefenstahl. Our naive Mr. Disney, who didn’t want to be political and demurred when given a copy of Mein Kampf, says he only reads work that he can use in his films and at the close of the play silently sits down to give it a little read.

These reversals, while perhaps historically accurate, are delivered without thoroughly exploring what’s behind them. We are left wondering not so much “Why?” but “Wait... what?”

The reason to go see the play is the acting work of Leo Marks and Ann Noble who tackle all the characters and keep the whole 90 minutes moving and engaging.

If you go in looking for a deep and complicated moral examination of art and fascism, you’ll leave disappointed. If you enter it more like a theme park that’s a colorful ride for 90 minutes with two strong actors — you’ll be fine.

Crevasse, a co-production of Son of Semele and the Victory Theatre, plays at the Victory Theatre in Burbank now through August 18th and then a four-week extension from October 4th through the 27th.