A.C.T.'s poetic "Phedre" a class act; a lesson in "less is more" but sexuality corseted

Claire Lautier as Aricie: enemy princess loves her hero Hippolytus, played by Jonathan Goad in Phedre.

A.C.T's new production of the classic Phedre, it’s quite a treat to witness classical theater live and intimately without having to go to Ashland, Oregon in the rain.  Indeed my friend Susan and I enjoyed a girls’ night out on Union Square and saw the world premiere of Racine’s Phedre (pronounced Fay-dra) at ACT on Wednesday.  The play stars veteran Shakespearean actress Seana McKenna performing a new translation from the 17th century French original, which in turn derives from an ancient Greek myth.  

So does this Canadian/French/San Francisco hybrid burst into spontaneous combustion or do things cancel each other out?  The controlled language and restraint are supposed to result in a tasteful and artistic release worthy of the Renaissance and not in a Medieval blood bath.  There is no comic relief to siphon the impact of the literary tension but perhaps a few unintentional, knowing giggles.  For another Biblical lesson in step-parent lust, there's Salome.

Helen Mirren has also played Phedre.   Does Helen put more illicit lust or erotica into the required sexual tension and chemistry, Helen being known for taking her kit off?  Seana McKenna's Phedre seems aging and Victorian, where the illicitness of her sexuality was all in her anguished head.  Sadly the lust is only a form of political domination or hillbilly revenge, the erotica never played out except in the twist of fate where those closest to her character start to die with her.   Seana is so dignified, your 86 year old godmother in Niagara Falls could play this role.  

However, Seana's veteran status as a Shakespearean actor plays out.  Seana tackles the daunting job of making not only a queen seem pitiable but also a queen who would eat her own young.  Seana portrays her as a flawed human, not so much a pawn of the gods or anyone else but as somebody falling through the cracks of sanity.  Moreover she must make this queen pitiable in a country that teaches a disdain for royalty and a love of democracy.  Princess Diana, Phedre is not.

Yet Seana seems completely persuasive in presenting the queen Phedre as a woman deserving of pity.  Her character lays dying at her husband the king's feet and he walks out, showing how noble and cold he can be to her.  He gives her not only a reason but an excuse in doing so.  She always does seem weak, emotionally frail and needy--indeed dying--and never strident or domineering, she's no diva.  Her obsession with a younger more sensitive man who is close at hand seems a symptom at all times, not an exercise in power.  It's in the staging and writing, granted, as when she turns on the hapless young man and says he was an aggressor.  The audience, critically, never sees or hears this from her--it's word of mouth and a form of disconnection where the audience doesn't see her to connect the dots to moral reprehensibility.

Moreover Seana herself looked pale and spent during her bow.   In any event, friend Susan and I are each single and about fifty, pretty much the same age as the protagonist.  A short hour and half later the full house emerged, I opened an umbrella to amble down the block, checking into the hospitable Adagio Hotel on our girls' night out.  Slideshow of Phedre, click here:   Phedre brings veteran Shakespeareans to SF.   Slideshow of Hotel Adagio below.

Seana McKenna in Phedre:

Like the king at the end, Canada with Phedre performs an act of diplomacy if not reconciliation.  After all this new contemporary Phedre comes from a formerly English colony where an entire province remains French. Very Canadian to mix English and French—Shakespearean actors with a French poet with the added twist of an American, San Franciscan stage. So San Francisco has Cirque du Soleil’s “Ovo”, a biodiverse product of Montreal, and just as it leaves San Francisco gets Phedre from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario. Ontario is English speaking, just south of Quebec over the border from New York.

For a slideshow from "Ovo", click here:  Ovo promises world of ladybug love and biodiversity.

Ovo evokes color, sound, audaciousness of Brazil

The poetry

Ah, the speaking. Timberlake Wertenbaker translates Racine’s Phedre into ten syllable lines to be as natural as possible. The French original has lines the length of a breath but are twelve syllables spoken naturally. She says English is a heavier language. You find this on Page seven of Plays on Words, in the interview with Timberlake Wertenbaker, speaking to the interviewer from her home in London.

1. The gods pursue me with relentless glee,
2. I loathe myself more than you can hate me.
3. The gods know this much, those arsonist gods
4. who set fire to my heart for their sport
5. and now sit watching with pleasure the twists,
6. contortions and writhings of human love.
7. Remember yourself how I first acted.
8. I tried to escape, I chased you away.
9. I became your enemy, cruel, loathsome.
10. Your hatred built a safe wall around me.
11. But what was the good of all these attempts?
12. You hated me more: I didn’t love you less.
13. Your pain only added to your appeal.
14. I languished, I burned, in tears and enflamed.
15. You only need to look at me, to see-
16. yes if your eyes would just look at me now--

Seduce him with power?
 

Racine's rise from orphan to under the Sun King

Yet not all men want jobs that require heroism and political prowess or nobility. However it seems nobility is as nobility does, it is not a product of bloodlines. Hippo was adopted by a grandfatherly figure hence his position in line for the throne and the controversy. This would resemble the playwright Racine’s lineage. Humble circumstances and raised as an orphan yet through the discipline of those religious figures who taught him language skills including Latin and Greek, he rose to become a historian of the French court, to Louis XIV, the Sun King.

Cardinal Richelieu sought to extend French power and the changing audience demanded a more refined tone to their entertainment says Michael Paller. The theatre would move from Medieval tastes for bombastment to the newer Renaissance emphasis on unity and intellectual examination, with a single tone, either comic or tragic. It was the dawn of good taste. So Racine’s severity is with justification. He means to upgrade and elevate society. Deviance is seen as monstrous, so much so just the thought of it is criminal and to be shamed.

Diplomacy aside, it probably takes a lot of maturity and experience to play the roles in Phedre straight, the classic being a religious or morality tale based on ancient myth. This ain’t no coming of age story with bourgeois decadence, Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in the Graduate. This after all derives from the ancient Greek myth of Hippolytus, from 428 B.C.E. and set in Athens.

Punishment fits the crime?

So is it so wrong that Hippolytus, an alleged misogynist, decries the attractions of women in favour of heroism and nobility? He is determined to be unlike his philandering father, himself a bastard child. Queen mother Phedre should have given the kid a break like a good mother and wife if she really were to be true to the boy’s father, her husband; instead she reacts like an adult to an adult; a woman to a man. She was playing dirty and she knew it. He wasn’t arrogant so much as young and innocent and doing his best. Yet this play seems to have the kind of punishment that fits the crime as in Dante, a contrapasso. For example illicit lovers who go to Hades get stuck together in position forever. Similarly, Racine’s Venus being the goddess of love who likes to tease, punishes family devotion and loyalty to a sister with unwanted lust.

The Phedre cast

To tempt fate, ACT presents a classically good looking cast of Shakespeareans and Americans complete with maidens fair. ACT presents corseted and bustled, Sophia Homan (Panope) and Mairin Lee (Ismene) along with classically handsome, swash buckling Neptune fearing virile heroes in knee high boots and manes of thick hair: Jonathan Goad (Hippolytus), Sean Arbuckle (Theramene), Thomas McCamus (Theseus). 

Claire Lautier as red haired Aricie, the enemy princess held captive, won me over when she stood up to the bastard king and father of her beloved out of pure love and loyalty. She displayed a natural dignity with her voice, rising to the occasion, that of a maiden becoming a woman as she acknowledges true love and admiration and fights for her hero. She demonstrated the restraint characteristic of the play as she kept her distance physically from the king. She refrains from feminine persuasion as she uses her voice and words to persuade him of his error in judgment about his innocent son, serving to elevate all and restore their dignity. She wears a virginal and modest off-white gown, unadorned and unembellished as the plain words she speaks so earnestly.  On the other hand this play is about restraint but I still would have liked to see more girlish joy and passion between this redhead and her good looking young man. 

Roberta Maxwell played the mother figure and well meaning nurse and confidant to Phedre, Oenone. Maxwell performed with restraint and earnestness while she conveyed the tragic self-pity of the play, probably remaining true to the playwright’s intent. She conveyed a sense of the self-serving to her royal servitude, especially in her lines about leaving her own children and her own country to care for Phedre. Her cloying tone in begging Phedre to reveal her torment did rise to the level of parent. It’s above and beyond her station as hired help. She was on her knees not in deference but in cajolery, probably living her life vicariously through the one she should have been serving. Common women didn’t have many choices then but did she have to take Phedre’s bait? On that note instead of leaving when scorned she kills herself, further looking like somebody who would leave her own children and country and making me wonder if they had not expelled this commoner or medler as Phedre had.

About a heightened sense of duty when one’s marriage is public. If the audience had first laid eyes upon the dashing King Theseus played by Tom McCamus, the story of Queen mother Phedre’s lust for the son would have been less convincing.  He seemed gallant, brave, poised, self-centered, cold, only hinting at his philandering if that.  It was the way he touched Aricie--not the way a gentleman would.  He treated the virgin like a wench, roughly. 

Yet he's still dashing and handsome to we older ladies.  Thanks.  I myself love men my own age, a glorious fifty—worldly men, seasoned, accomplished, commanding respect and admiration. Give me an airline captain any day.  Four stripes. To that end I did wear my real captain’s jacket to the premiere, four stripes on the sleeves.  Speaking of which, I shook hands with the play's director Carey Perloff, ACT’s effervescent director, as she cheerfully greeted patrons at the theater door.

Back to Phedre and her handsome if absent husband the rogue king. Her being heart broken at his six month absence with no word would be felt. She’s cracking:

P:38/L/5

1. I am to rule? I’m to control the State
2. when I can’t even control my own state
3. when my own senses escape from my rule?
4. When I’ve become enslaved by my own shame
5. When I’m dying…

However if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Phedre’s lust for the forbidden fruit, his son who was supposed to take care of her, would be understandable, just continuing the debauchery of the clan. That’s veteran Shakespearean actress Seana McKenna with young Jonathan Goad and his expressive eyes, his forlorn and searching looks.  More fuel to the fire comes from the writing:

P:20/L:1

1. Some say he was pursuing a new love
2. when the sea dragged down this faithless husband.

The opera Ariadne aux Naxos?

Moreover, the family history includes Theseus’ love affair with none other than Phedre’s sister. Sister Ariadne saved him from a labyrinth of the minotaur, a half bull monstrosity, with some enchanted string leading him to safety. Yet he abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos. Hence the opera, Ariadne aux Naxos? Even college level opera students learn this at the SF Conservatory, click here:  Opera workshop including Emma McNairy in Ariadne aux Naxos at SF Conservatory.

We see the wife Phedre try to justify her manipulations which sound like vengeance, given the labyrinth of family politics and machinations:

P:73/L:10

1. His heart is closed to love’s sweet temptation?
2. then let us entice him with a kingdom.
3. He showed no revulsion for the empire:
4. He finds Athens attractive if not me.
5. He was already putting out to sea
6. and his ships were turned towards that great city.
7. No, go and find this ambitious young man,

Where does a hermit learn carnal knowledge?

Where did the playwright Racine get all this carnal knowledge if he grew up with hermits?

Perhaps Hippolytus does indeed represent the young, repressed and disciplined playwright Racine, a Frenchman, but the Frenchman as a bastion of culture and father of many, which he became in his later years. Racine, himself an orphan, found himself raised by religious hermits only to find many mistresses when he became a playwright in the French theater as an adult. He overcame a humble and tragic start in life through his intellectual discipline. Specifically Racine learned to appreciate language, learning the arts of Greek and Latin and foregoing worldly goods and temptations for such spiritual enrichment. Hence, the gods’ presence in his play Phedre and how they affect the mortal soul with their very human vices, mischief, punishment and vengeance, all articulated with the words, conveying the emotions whipping about within their souls but not to be acted out.

The love and loyalty inspired by such character comes forth in the eloquent speech by Hippolytus’ friend, who witnesses the hero’s death. Excellent acting by Sean Arbuckle, who plays the hero’s tutor and loyal comrade, Theramene. He relates the horror of the gods’ wrath as the king and father’s curse plays out on his friend, the son.  You see him from the opening lines of the play with his friend, you seem him in the end holding the bloody shirt.  Fine line between melodrama and drama and there was no unintentional laughter in the theater.  Well done.

Lessons for schoolgirls and the next generation

I think she beat herself up over this precisely because she was a loyal wife. If she were simply a desperate housewife she would have simply indulged in mischief and relished her secret rather than stabbing herself in the heart. So here is where Racine succeeds in making me feel pity for Phedre if not contempt for her self destruction. She didn’t deserve to die for being weak. Yet by teaching young girls such a lesson in obeying a higher calling just when the temptation of romance and young love beckons, Racine was saving their souls. Saving them from torment and self destruction and for the good of all, for the improvement of society. This would probably be a lesson only the older generations with political and cultural aspirations would support. The young will be young, it is their nature. Perhaps Racine is telling the older generation how to raise the next for the improvement of France.

I myself can see self-sacrifice in the name of a marriage, when the marriage is to somebody with a higher calling. Warning of exactly this, loving a man with a higher calling, a man of the sea, there’s an opera of English origin, the first English opera. It’s a warning to young women against the dangers of falling for the charms of sailors or men with higher callings who will abandon them on shore. Soprano Susan Graham just sang Dido and Aeneas at Philharmonia Baroque in December. This was a chamber performance originally presented at an English girls’ boarding school centuries ago.

Perhaps I didn’t get the message but how can I begrudge such a person comfort, especially if his actions in the end benefit the kingdom? A better message is to answer one’s own higher calling, to perform one’s own duties to the kingdom, so that there is no choice between husband and country, it’s all for one and one for all. Still, the kingdom never leaves yet it doesn’t keep we mortals warm at night.

To comfort the queen in the king’s absence or just in the absence of his affections, her nurse tries to tell her that is what mortality is all about, feelings, and even the gods suffer from lust and longing that when inappropriate, plays havoc with the order of things. But Phedre had no communication with her husband—physically and emotionally even when he came home. That was the tragedy, not that she ultimately spoke but that they failed to speak enough. Don’t let words or lack of them get in the way.

Phedre and the nurse needed a girls’ night out.

Girls' night out at Hotel Adagio on Union Square

So back at the Adagio Hotel on Geary. I had joined Joie de Vivre club and perks include free bottle of red or white wine delivered to room, a newspaper in the morning.

We shared a medium well burger for ten bucks with fries, cheese and grilled onions, served with a tray of mustard, ketchep and mayo. $13 with beer at happy hour in the bistro.

Comfy and remarkably quiet room with two beds, fresh white duvet covers and a leaf patterned blanket, soft and earthy. We never even heard a siren outside. White fluffy terry robes. Free wi fi. Gym. Susan liked their spa products, lemongrass. Bathtub. Even an umbrella in the closet. Friendly warm staff, chatty. Talked about handmade crafts and crocheting. Maybe a craft café. One young woman with long straight blond hair just moved from Colorado. Up and left on her own.

Joie de Vivre hotels have many boutique hotels with lounges and bistros around Union Square and the theater district.  Hotel Adagio at 550 Geary offers a Spanish Colonial decor.  Click here:  Hotel Adagio.

Alternatively, Hotel Rex caters to the literary crowd and offers a turn of the century, Oscar Wilde era lounge; decor featuring vintage manual typewriters that would make Herb Caen proud; period artwork and jazz on the radio along with a lovely bistro with a sidewalk view.   Here's a feature on an opera singer's salon at Hotel Rex with a slideshow of the hotel.  Click here:  Hotel Rex and opera salon.

Be good to yourselves, ladies.  Cheers.

Phedre plays at A.C.T. on Geary through February 7.  Tickets run $10 to $82.
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For more information on JDV Hotels, http://www.jdvhotels.com/

For more information on A.C.T. and Phedre:  ACT

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