PREVIEWS

REVIEWS

 

A tangled threesome with Voltaire at its center

Oct 29,

Enlightened? That's his goal

By Mike Boehm, Times Staff Writer

 

Angry with the status quo in society and in theater, Jean-Claude van Itallie turned outrage into boundary-breaking plays during the 1960s, earning a spot in the textbooks, if not the standard repertory.

 

"His affiliation with the Open Theater and Joseph Chaikin placed him at the forefront of experimental dramaturgy in the 1960s and 1970s ... [merging] European traditions with a poetic vision of American experience," says the Cambridge Guide to Theatre's entry on Van Itallie, who was born in Brussels and came to the United States as a small boy when his family fled the Nazi blitz of 1940.

 

Most theater fans would need a textbook to place the author of "America Hurrah" and "The Serpent." The first was hailed as a breakthrough in its depiction of the spirit-savaging commodification of American life. One sequence featured actors in huge doll heads, designed by Robert Wilson, working up a destructive sexual frenzy that culminates in limb-ripping violence. It ran for 640 performances off-Broadway starting in 1966. For "The Serpent" (1968), Van Itallie teamed with director Chaikin and his company of actors to create a ceremonial, dance-like form of theater that used episodes from the book of Genesis to trace the roots of humanity's alienation from itself.

 

But Van Itallie is no partisan of the experimental fringes.

 

He sits erect and cross-legged on the couch in his breezy room at a hotel in Venice, a trim, sociable man of 68 with a firm, fluent voice honed through many years of teaching writing, acting and meditation at universities and in private workshops. He does most of his teaching nowadays at Shantigar (Sanskrit for "Peaceful Home"), the 450-acre spread he bought in the Berkshires of Massachusetts with his take from "America Hurrah."

 

"I've never strived be avant-garde. I don't even like the term 'avant-garde,' " Van Itallie says.

 

He takes no umbrage at the suggestion that "Light," his new historical costume drama about a love triangle centered on Voltaire, one of the giants of the 18th century Enlightenment, seems aimed at mainstream audiences. It offers mind-nourishment, historical big shots and sexual complications — ingredients on which subscribers to regional theaters have been known to sup happily.

 

Van Itallie's work rarely has intersected with the mainstream; exceptions include the Mark Taper Forum's 1987 premiere of "The Traveler," his drama based on Chaikin's struggles with speech and language disabilities after a stroke, and Chekhov revivals that use Van Itallie's highly regarded translations.

 

Any avant-gardists inclined to criticize Van Itallie for moving to the middle ground with "Light" might soften upon hearing the glow in his voice as he sums up the play's central theme. "It's a struggle between light and dark. In Voltaire, the light wins. That's what's so astonishing. The light wins, despite all the detours he's made in his life. The light wins."

 

For a mainstream play, it had quirky beginnings. Author Wendy Gimbel ("Havana Dreams"), a friend of the playwright for nearly 30 years, says she had long watched him explore themes important to him — rooted in his regard for his sometime lover, Chaikin, in his longtime Tibetan Buddhist practice and in his experiences as a gay man.

 

"I think he's a wonderful writer, and I shared with him the hope he would do the kind of play that would let a very large audience see that his talent was not only intact but had grown and matured," Gimbel said from her home in New York City.

 

OK, the playwright told her in 2001. Give me a subject.

 

Van Itallie says he knew immediately that Gimbel's idea about Voltaire and his circle was perfect, and within a day he was scribbling notes and embarking on more than a year of research. He wrote his script in an unorthodox way, moving about, acting and intoning the three characters' lines while an assistant transcribed everything he said. The technique stems from his theory that writing, like acting, is a physical activity, and that it will be most immediate and truthful — "from the gut," as he puts it — if the body as well as the mind is enlisted.

 

Through a network of mutual contacts, the script found its way to Jessica Kubzansky, co-artistic director of the Theatre@ Boston Court. She had studied Van Itallie's 1960s plays in courses at Harvard and Cal Arts but wasn't up on his more recent work.

 

"It certainly wasn't 'The Serpent,' " she said. But she was drawn by characters who were "truly luminous beings, with complexity, waywardness and human foibles in addition to the many ways in which they were great."

 

She was impressed that, even in a more conventional milieu, Van Itallie still was aiming for inventive sequences that would lift "Light" beyond routine realism. Ellen Stewart, founder and director of New York's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, has introduced or revived Van Itallie's works often since 1965 — including a recent mounting of the violent "Motel" segment of "America Hurrah."

 

She said that while his experimental techniques made his name, storytelling has been in the mix too. "He's not selling out. He's always been both. He deserves anything that might come his way."

 

Looking back, Van Itallie thinks he shied from success after being hailed for "America Hurrah," retreating to the Massachusetts woods instead of promoting his career in New York. He says he resists feeling bitter about being in all the textbooks yet infrequently in the repertory.

 

"Of course there are moments of frustration, but it would only hurt me to hold on to them," he said. "The spiritual challenge is not to dwell on the negative."

 

He knows from experience not to let hope consume him, either. Yes, he'd love "Light" to be a hit. "But the moment that you expect something of the gods, they do something else."

 

 

 

An 18th century love triangle forms the basis

of Claude van Itallie's "Light."

By Philip Brandes , Special to The Times

 

As celebrity love triangles go, among the most complicated — and historically significant — was one that found the 18th century French writer Voltaire caught in an emotional tug of war between his mistress, the brilliant aristocratic Emilie du Chatelet, and his admirer, Frederick the Great, the poet-warrior king of Prussia. Their amorous adventures helped shape the turbulent intellectual, political and religious currents in an age of cultural transition.

 

They also make a remarkably compelling story, rescued from historical obscurity by Jean-Claude van Itallie's new three-character play, "Light," in a beautifully performed debut from Pasadena's The Theatre @ Boston Court. Drawing on the extensive writings of all three protagonists, Van Itallie's original dialogue lends crisp voices to these glittering personalities while telescoping their life stories into manageable shape (considering that the correspondence between Voltaire and Frederick alone fills 150 volumes, we get off pretty easy). To efficiently cover this wealth of biographical detail, Van Itallie relies extensively on monologues, which make the piece a bit talky at times. However, the direct interactions between characters are focused where they count most — on pivotal emotional exchanges of piercing eloquence whose immediacy stands out in sharp relief against summary narrative.

 

Under Jessica Kubzansky's stylish direction, a trio of first-rate performers evokes finely drawn, riveting characters racked with inner conflicts. As Voltaire, an overeducated offspring of France's emerging merchant class, Lenny Von Dohlen reveals razor-sharp intellectual bravado constantly undermined by feelings of inadequacy even as he tries to ascend the social ladder.

 

John Hansen's Frederick is both a tower of strength and a lost soul — an artist and homosexual who never aspired to power, he sees in Voltaire's poetry the embodiment of everything he gave up in life.

 

Jeanie Hackett's Emilie supplies the emotional heart of the piece. An accomplished mathematician, linguist and musician in a time that offered little reward for talented women, she shares Voltaire's intellect as well as his alienation — they fit together "like two spheres of light."

 

Against an ominous backdrop of intolerance (heretical thinkers were still burned), enlightenment treads a precarious path through these three interlocking lives, as Emilie and Frederick vie for the conquest of Voltaire. Trophy wives are a dime a dozen, but a trophy philosopher — that's a new one.

 

• 'Light'
• Where: The Theatre@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena
• When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. No performance on Thanksgiving. Ends: Nov. 28
• Price: $25 and $30
• Contact: (626) 683-6883

 

 

PASADENA WEEKLY

 

Casting “Light” on the enlightenment

Voltaire is a man for our times in lavish Theatre @ Boston Court production

 

By Leigh Kennicott

 

At the Theatre @ Boston Court, Jessica Kubzansky’s masterful direction for the world premiere of Jean-Claude Van Itallie’s play “Light” shows off the little jewel of a theater to its fullest advantage.

 

The stunningly rich yet spare set, the atmospheric shafts of light, the subtle sound effects and music provide sight and sound to transport us two centuries backward to the time of the French Enlightenment, when adventurous thinkers strained against strictures of backward religious and social policies.

 

In his play, Van Itallie identifies Voltaire as such a thinker, because his sharp wit was constantly at odds with the king of France, he faced continual exile and censure. Voltaire has been called “the most tireless man of letters of his century.” We may remember him as the author of “Candide,” a satirical novel skewering religious optimism. He wrote a slew of plays, dramatic commentaries and pamphlets including “Philosophical Letters” and “Essays on Morals.” Indeed, he wrote more than 20,000 letters. Out of these, Van Itallie brings to light the personality of this great man, introducing two others who were closest to him – his lover, Emilie, Marquise du Chatelet, and friend and benefactor, Frederick the Great of Prussia.

 

How these three flutter, traverse and part renders the minuet of Van Itallie’s stunning achievement. He has written a roman a lettres, and illustrated novel, and put it on the stage. For audiences weaned on the neatly spun plotlines of television, however, the elusive connections between the characters may prove daunting.

 

Voltaire found the charming and extremely intelligent Marquise to be a political ally as well as a many-bedded lover. She was renowned for her translations of Sir Isaac Newton’s “Principia” and Voltaire had attended Newton’s funeral when he was exiled to England. Frederick, on the other hand, began his friendship as a brash schoolboy who developed a long-distance crush on the philosopher. Frederick seems to have had a complicated personality. He loved music, poetry and philosophy, yet he was an incisive battlefield general who successfully waged war to expand the perimeters of Prussia. He collected Voltaire for his court as he would another portrait and Voltaire responded by spending three tumultuous years with him in Potsdam.

 

The trio intersects more than interacts. Under Kubzansky’s eye, they move and pose beneath shafts of light; the power of three strong performances upholds out interest. At the center, Lenny Von Dohlen presents Voltaire as a wily opportunist, who despite his prodigious intellect was always aware of his status as a commoner. His impersonation is loopily charming, yet never tart.

 

The problem, I suppose is that what was once considered outrageous is now commonplace. It is worth noting that Voltaire is the author of the saying “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” a concept that might add a little more civility to our own discourse today.

 

On opening night, the actor managed to struggle with a difficult onstage costume change with impeccable savior faire.

 

As the divine Emilie, Jeanie Hackett contributes both the wiles and the force to portray the woman of whom Voltaire said, “She was a great man, whose only fault was being a woman.” Her sexual liberation seems light years ahead of the time even considering the loose morality of the French court. Unfortunately, without attendant birth control methods, her liberation proved her undoing, which Van Itallie writes and Kubzansky directs in a brilliant concluding sequence.

 

Frederick the Great seems the most difficult of the trio to delineate. But John Hansen brilliantly navigates these treacherous waters growling as a rough hussar, crooning into his flute, girlishly wooing the older philosopher. His portrayal of the royal prince has all the spit and polish of the position. Although his character was more tangential in the trajectory of Voltaire’s life, Hansen realizes the most detailed character arc of the three.

 

Opening night jitters were the only thing keeping this production from flawlessness. The precision of 18^th century movement will come with time. Difficulty with costumes, a faulty (and somewhat cheesy) ethereal swing and late light cues are all fixable. The mystifying and ever-present fog is a distraction for the minimum payoff of creating shafts of light. But the difficulty for many spectators may be the absence of tension. After one and one half hours (the first act), my friend turned to me and said (I can go home now.” If we had, we would have missed the real punch, which ends with Voltaire’s brilliant speech in the second act.

 

Kubzansky should be awarded for her perceptive and evocative stylization; the set designer, Tom Buderwitz, for his grand set, Jeremy Pivnick for pinpoint lighting design. The clever sound of pages turning by John Zalewski keeps us situated in the text. Costumes by Alex Jaeger are reminiscent of the period without being restrictive and Joyce Cantrell’s wigs are seamless.

 

“Light” continues through Nov. 28, Thursday through Saturday at 8p.m. And Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Theatre @ Boston Court 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. All tickets are $30. Phone (626) 683-6883 or visit www.BostonCourt.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

“LIGHT” THROUGH VOLTAIRE’S EYES

 

By Frances Baum Nicholson

Correspondent

 

The period commonly known as the Enlightenment was a remarkable time filled with equally remarkable people. From John Locke to Isaac Newton, philosophers and scientists rocked the world with new ideas about everything from the value of human life to the nature of the universe.

 

For the revolutionary thinkers who lived outside of Locke and Newton’s Britain, being an original thinker was far more dangerous. That was certainly the case for Voltaire, the self-made gentleman whose satiric criticisms of his age would land him in prison or exile throughout much of his life.

 

Still, Voltaire’s writings on freedom and self-determination – as well as his condemnations of the whole concept of human perfection – proved instructive to our founding fathers and to those reconstructing his own France after the revolution some say he helped to inspire.

 

In “Light,” now premiering at The Theatre at Boston Court in Pasadena, one gets a close look at Voltaire, both in his own words and through the eyes of fellow intellectual – and sometimes mistress – Emilie, Marquise du Chatelet, and devoted fan Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. The wild intertwinnings of their lives would make good theater regardless, but when the connections are those of intellect as well as the heart, the piece becomes compelling, at least as arranged by playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie.

 

Van Itallie combines letters with witty narrative to take what is almost a series of joined monologues and gives them considerable tension and sense of ensemble. As Voltaire, Lenny von Dohlen balances the egoist, the wit and the genius of a man whose world revolved around himself more than most.

 

Jeannie Hackett, as the irrepressible Emilie, makes even mathematics sound like an adventure, and brings to the impulses of life a kind of joy in the sheer process of living.

 

John Hansen’s Frederick proves far more pedantic, but then so is the character. Frederick was repressed by his own culture, and his hypocrisy seems almost as genetic as his sexual orientation. Still, as a foil for Voltaire’s flamboyance, he has an appropriate place.

 

Tom Buderwitz’s scenic design evokes period while leaving the floor free for a staging which falls just short of being a collection of recitations. Jeremy Pivnick’s use of light to indicate when letters are being quoted gives an edge to these pithy, but necessarily episodic moments. Indeed, everything from the music to the wigs adds to the theatricality of what could be a very talky piece.

 

“Light” ends poorly. Emilie dead, Frederick rejected, Voltaire is left with nothing to do but pontificate. And he does, speaking to the core beliefs which made him legendary, but doing so as if delivering a sermon.

 

After the sense of theater engendered the rest of the performance, this devolves to a treatise. It’s not the final impression one wishes to leave.

 

“Light” is for those with a little background. It assumes a knowledge of the politics of the era, and of the works of Newton and Voltaire. Through it assails subjects taught to 10^th-graders, it is also probably not for children, as there is considerable adult content to the conversations if not the action.

 

Still, “Light” offers a chance to re-examine a man whose writings became the soul of an age, the writings of a scientist left out of the canon until only recently, and the life of the man who made Prussia into the kind of country which could embrace world dominion. Not bad for a couple of hours. Not bad at all.

 

Frances Baum Nicholson is a free-lance writer based in Altadena. Write to her in care of the San Gabriel Valley Newspapers, Features Department, 1210 N. Azusa Canyon Road, West Covina, CA 91790.

 

 

11/12/04

TICKETHOLDERS

PICK OF THE WEEK

by Travis Michael Holder

 

Light at Theatre @ Boston Court -- It took 40 years, but it was worth the wait. The triumphant return of master wordsmith Jean-Claude van Itallie with the world premiere of his gently epic Light is an auspicious event for Los Angeles theatre. A fascinating web of sexual, political and sociological intrigue winds through his lyrical fact-based new play, which poetically chronicles the tenuously intertwined relationship shared by Voltaire, the Marquise du Chatelet, and Frederick the Great. Van Itallie’s beguiling account couldn’t be in better hands than the gifted artists quickly making Theatre @ Boston Court a culturally unwavering entity in our desert wasteland. Light is elegantly and lavishly designed, directed with an extraordinary fluidity by T@BC’s co-artistic director Jessica Kubzansky, and acted with utmost precision. Lenny Von Dolan as Voltaire is even better than he was in Theatre District earlier this year and both Jeanie Hackett and John Hansen as his ever-hopping bedmates offer matchless support. I couldn't recommend this ambitious achievement more enthusiastically. For tickets, call (626) 683-6883.

For more comprehensive reviews by Travis Holder, check out www.ReviewPlays.com.

 

 

 

LIGHT

 

Jean-Claude Van Itallie’s stunning but flawed romance imagines the heady scholarship and seductions of the Age of Enlightenment through the true-to-life love triangle among Voltaire (Lenny Von Dohlen), King Frederick of Prussia (John Hansen) and Emilie, the Marquise du Chatelet (Jeanie Hackett) — with Voltaire at the center. The triptych of overheated egos could make a combustible evening if Van Itallie’s script hadn’t boxed them in with soliloquies — even their rare spurts of interaction are peppered with asides. Their speeches are impeccably written and entirely constraining. As a comment on each’s defining self-centeredness, the monologues make their point early on. Director Jessica Kubzansky guides her small cast to superlative performances of people themselves layered in artifice and judicious pleasantries; Von Dohlen, Hackett and Hansen are stage wonders, and one wishes their characters could sustain flight. There’s a stretch in the middle when they at least take off, and the resulting sparks complement the golden grandeur of Tom Buderwitz’s set (equally fine lighting, sound and costume design by, respectively, Jeremy Pivnick, John Zalewski and Alex Jaeger). Too soon, however, the play also swoons under Voltaire’s charisma and lands in a biographical briar patch, leaving the lovers, and the magic, jilted in the thistles. Theater@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; Thurs.Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (Thurs. perfs are 2-for-1; pay-whatyou-will mat Oct. 31; no perf Nov. 25); thru Nov. 28. (626) 6836883. Written 10/28/2004 (Amy Nicholson)

 

 

A CurtainUp Los Angeles Review

Light By Jana J. Monji

 

Under the astute direction of Jessica Kubzansky, this world premiere of Jean-Claude Van Itallie's Light at the Theater@Boston Court in Pasadena is a sparkling jewel of wit, manners and history. It lifts Voltaire from the dusty archives of history and rescues the Marquise du Chatelet from obscurity.

 

Van Itallie vividly paints a portrait of the necessary social machinations that swirled around an uncommon commoner with a superior intellect who mingled with and often angered the aristocracy in a strict class system.

 

Tom Buderwitz's set suggests an elegant though ornate 18th Century lifestyle. Sitting under separate arches, the characters in this amusing menage à trois wait for their introductions. First, the spotlight falls on Voltaire (Lenny Von Dohlen) who wears only a loose white shirt and white tights. Even with his salt-and-pepper hair, Von Dohlen's elfin smile and mischievous eyes make him seem boyish.

 

Emilie, the Marquise du Chatelet (Jeanie Hackett), sits stage left, gorgeously dressed in blue satin and an elaborate bodice but not at all stiff or formal. Hackett gives Emilie a bold, familiar posturing and vocal quality that's almost slatternly, or rather, she adopts a man's sexual attitudes.n. Van Itallie uses her to give frank social commentary.

 

Frederick, stage right, is a man uncomfortable in his own skin. An early boyhood desire to flee his father's tyranny with a man, ends tragically. Yet he too becomes brutish and demanding when not weetly manipulative. Hansen's gruff countenance and military bearing schizophrenically transforms into a soft spoken lover, trembling under the seduction of kingly power to force events when he meets Voltaire, the older man of his desire.

 

Intellectual attraction drew both Emilie and Frederick to Voltaire who wished to be a member of their class. Emilie wasn't married to Voltair and in Van Itallie's play, her hubbie never appears or threatens Voltaire's place in her affections. Iintellectual electricity sparks between her and Voltaire,even when physical attraction wanes. Likewise, the king had a queen, but she's even more easily dismissed.

 

Van Itallie mixes imagined conversations with excerpts from the letters these three wrote to each other. The grand, carefully crafted pronouncements make one yearn for a time before e-mail . Emilie protected and promoted Voltaire within the French court. Frederick, as a king, offered Voltaire greater prestige and protection. Although Frederick outlives Emilie, who died soon after a late in life childbirth, having effectively cuckolded both her husband and Voltaire, Van Itallie credits Emilie's lasting influence for Voltaire's masterpiece, Candide.

 

Kubzansky wraps this production in confectionary sweetness. Von Dohlen's charm is light and flitting, balancing Hackett's more earth-bound Emilie and the almost morose darkness of Hansen's Frederick.

 

The production sparkles and teases one to learn more about this lively threesome--a woman whose scholarly ambitions were hindered by her sex, a king whose birthright kept him from finding true love, and a philosopher who wished to be an aristocrat. If only history classes were all this intriguing.

 

LIGHT Playwright: Jean-Claude Van Itallie

Director: Jessica Kubzansky

Cast: Lenny Von Dohlen (Voltaire), Jeanie Hackett (Emilie, Marquise du Chatelet), John Hansen (Frederick the Great, King of Prussia)

Set Design: Tom Buderwitz

Costume Design: Alex Jaeger

Sound Design: John Zalewski

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes with one 15 minute intermission

Running dates:Oct. 23-Nov. 28

Light, The Theatre@Boston Court, 70 North Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 626-683-6883. Reviewed by Jana J. Monji on Oct. 23, 2004.

 

 

 

"Light," presented by and at the Theatre@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Thu.Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. Oct. 23-Nov. 28. $15-30. (626) 683-6883.

 

November 08, 2004

Light

Reviewed By Hoyt Hilsman

 

Jean-Claude van Itallie's tale of the romantic and intellectual triangle among Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and Emilie, Marquise de Chatelet -- an important scientist and translator of Newton's Principia Mathematica -- is engaging and evocative, if somewhat overwritten. With the deft direction of Jessica Kubzansky and the nuanced performances of a talented cast, the play builds to a climactic moment of emotional power and intellectual truth.

 

The iconoclastic Voltaire (Lenny Von Dohlen) was the intellectual rock star of the 18th century, and in van Itallie's play he is coveted, intellectually and romantically, by the quixotic and quirky Frederick the Great (John Hansen) and by the Marquise de Chatelet (Jeanie Hackett), an intellectual and sexual powerhouse, who views Voltaire as the ultimate catch. Although the play begins slowly, each character recounting the events, starting with childhood, that formed their lives, it develops into a fugue of lust and possession, with Voltaire as the object of seduction. And although the sexual dangerous liaisons are apparent, the stakes are much greater here, as the players thrash out the great themes of the Enlightenment: science versus religion, war versus peace, and the world of God in opposition to the world of man.

 

Van Itallie is clearly as interested in the battle of grand ideas as he is in the emotional battle between these grand figures, which presents a tough challenge to performers trying to inhabit their characters. However, this gifted cast, under Kubzansky's direction, weaves the emotional and intellectual complexities into what is, in the end, a marvelous tapestry.

 

Von Dohlen expresses the right balance of intellectual brilliance and hopeless naïveté in Voltaire. Hackett is discerning and thoughtful in her performance, bringing a critical, nuanced eye to the sexual power and the intense intelligence of Emilie. And Hansen seems to instinctually capture the deep conflict in the soul of the emperor, who is torn between the power of poetry and the terrible glory of war.

 

The great and secret pleasure of experiencing the past through the eyes of a contemporary author, played out onstage with gifted actors under the guidance of a fine director, is how much it tells us about our world today. In the final speech of this play, the echoes of the daily headlines were reverberating off the theatre walls, connecting the past to the present. This is an achievement for any playwright, and it is one of which van Itallie should be proud.

 

 

The Wicked Stage

 

Pasadena’s Theatre @ Boston Court continues its ambitious first season with the world premiere of Jean Claude Van Itallie’s LIGHT, which recounts the unconventional 18th-century love triangle among Voltaire, Emilie du Chatelet, and King Frederick of Prussia. The Times’ Philip Brandes found it a “remarkably compelling story… beautifully performed” under Jessica Kubzansky’s “stylish direction.” His one quibble—that the playwright “relies extensively on monologues, which make the piece a bit talky”—was a bigger problem for the LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson, who felt these potentially “combustible” characters are “boxed in by soliloquies,” which she called “impeccably written and entirely constraining.” She did, however, praise the actors—Lenny Von Dohlen, Jeannie Hackett, and John Hansen—as “stage wonders.”