Easter (The Play not the Pagan Holiday)

Slipstream Theatre Initiative closes out the holiday season with the appropriately titled play Easter adapted by the company from August Strindberg's original.

The play opens with...let me start again.

The Summary

The play is, as advertised on Slipstream's website:

A family unit is publicly ruined and awaits the "Giant"

The "Giant" being a direct allusion to one of the characters and possibly metaphorical to the guilt/sin that wracks the entire family.  It opens on a family in the middle of a scandal, with Elis's (Ryan Ernst) father imprisoned for siphoning funds from his investors. Elis and his fiancee Kristine (Luna Alexander) are trying to survive the upheaval of this small town when they are visited by Elis's faithful student Benjamin (Miles Bond). Benjamin befriends their insane sister, Eleonora (Lauren Alo). Through their budding romance, it is revealed that Eleonora has inadvertently stolen a flower from the florist, which induces another scandal on top of the one already bubbling. Sin stacks on top of sin and more goes wrong before it is ultimately set right in a late, third act, deus ex machina ending.

The Adaptation

August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright at the turn of the century.  Celebrated as perhaps their greatest author, Strindberg wrote prolifically over 60 plays and 30 books.  His most famous international work is perhaps Miss Julie, done at the height of his career, it was among the most influential works of the naturalist movement.  Naturalism was developed by writers such as August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian playwright) and is believed to have been perfected in the play Miss Julie as a single event happening in nearly real time with almost no cuts in time or place or characters. The most effective image to describe it would be: imagine a domestic drama happening within a house and then take away one of the walls (hence the expression: fourth wall).

Easter is an earlier work than Miss Julie, but just as influential. It was polemical even in its day. The line: Judge not, lest ye be judged springs to mind upon viewing of Easter and among the most common lines in the play is:

"As you sow, so shall you reap."

That idea is pervasive in Strindberg's work and is most clearly displayed in his play Easter.

This adaptation has few anachronisms that spring to mind outside of the formal dialogue that the characters use. I mention it only because one of the characters, Benjamin (played by Miles Bond), also remarks on the peculiar nature of the speech patterns.  However, Benjamin is free from such verbal restrictions and brings a wonderfully vibrant, contemporary sound to the dialogue that refreshes the audience whenever it would to be too much.

The Lobby

As with all of Slipstream's productions, the show starts as soon as you walk in the door. Their use of space has consistently been dynamic, often using multiple spaces or the lobby as a part of the theatrical experience, setting the tone of the play with improvisation or performance-based house speeches. This time there was no such thing. It was surprisingly muted with chairs lining the lobby and a single book lying open where audience was encouraged to sign it like a guest registry at a church or funeral home.

The Design

Once inside the playing space, we were greeted by the lovely artwork of Joshua Daniel Palmer who painted the backdrops that lined the windows that were backlit to give the impression of stained glass to great effect. The back wall of the space is painted concrete; the mismatching colors work surprisingly well, the crude design choice creates a provincial atmosphere that verisimilitude could not. The audience is split down the middle by the stage, which appears to be in the shape of a giant cross. The effect is startling. The overwhelming religious iconography in the space definitely gave the impression of an almost religious event (and all the guilt that that implies).

The Actors

Elis played by Ryan Ernst is a remarkably charming little bastard, complaining about every one else's foibles and ignorant of his own with just a hint of pinache. His wife Kristine played by Luna Alexander plays this performance remarkably close to the chest, but says more in a sigh or the taking off of a jacket than most of the expository lines in the play.  Mrs. Heyst played by the incomparable Jan Cartwright is delightfully overbearing in her role; attacking her family and friends with shocking vitriol and wit (and we love her for it). Eleonora played by Lauren Alo is disturbing as fuck; one part savior, one part madwoman, and three parts messiah; the moment she hit the stage I was no longer sure what play I was in.  Benjamin played by Miles Bond performs a sincere and lovestruck school boy to great acclaim, delivering a healthy dose of contemporary colloquialisms to an adaptation that can feel otherwise clunky in its dialogue. Lindkvist played by the dynamo David Schoen as the "Giant come down from the Mountain" is frightening and somehow heart-warming all at once.

The Staging/Direction

I do not wish to belabor this too much, but the most glaring problem with the play was easily the staging.  The stage in the shape of a giant cross proved to be both boon and bane. Boon in that it was a remarkably constructed icon of religious symbolism. Bane in that the actors had all of three directions to go: left, right, or forward. At no point was this more apparent than in Act III with the introduction of Lindkvist (David Schoen) walks back and forth between Elis and his seat on the couch against the back wall. This happened by my count no less than six times and I started counting after the fact. It was miserable to watch as there was no variety whatever. It limited the number of playing spaces to on the stage and a small room behind the audience's seating (for the young lovers in one scene). 

Conclusion

I will say this, I am unsure about the play's relevance in contemporary theatre. It isn't the epitome of Strindberg's naturalism, nor indicative of his later work, which led to surrealist works like Dream Play, which influenced later writers like Eugene O'Neill and Sean O'Casey.  It doesn't have the sort of themes that resonate deeply in today's zeitgeist the way Ibsen's A Doll's House still does. It is a middling play in the middle of Strindberg's career. When leaving, I heard a number of people remark on how "nice" the play was and "pleasant", which is unusual for a polemical work. Normally they tend towards a call to arms. But, maybe that is the point. Maybe, unlike Ibsen's Doll's House, Ghosts, or An Enemy of the People, Strindberg's Easter is more about the community rallying together in times of upheaval. Maybe society isn't something to be overthrown, but lived with and nurtured. Kind of like the insane girl they kept locked away for years in her room and let her out once an appropriately aged boy discovered her by accident. You know...charming.

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