Word: quartette
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...Quartett aims to disturb. Heiner Muller's play, a loose re-interpretation of the novel Les Liasons Dangereuses, toys with notions of gender and desire in a series of icily barbed dialogues. Running approximately an hour in itself, the play is carefully prefaced by a series of Muller fragments, apparently intended to augment the spectacle of soulless debauchery. Unfortunately, these fog-embellished effects are symptomatic of a trendily shallow sensibility which comes uncomfortably close to tipping tight drama over into dull farce. As we were informed that the action took place in a post-World War Three bomb shelter...
Carefully, constructedly cool, Quartett takes the complex, bulky plot of the novel and pares it down to two actors who alternate personalities and sexes with cheerless machination in a game of sex and vengeance. Winsome Brown as the Marchioness, Merteuil, plays her role with bloodthirsty relish. Her obvious confidence and professionalism enable her to add the strain of comic self-consciousness that brings the play to life. Brown moves in tightening circles around Tom Hopkins as Valmont, the lethargic predator turned prey. Hopkins' Valmont is charming and at times strikingly perverse. On the other hand, the interaction between these...
...where some of their surroundings lose their form, Brown and Hopkins are capable of compensating for the chilly atmosphere, which can otherwise freeze the viewer out. Quartett demands maintenance of that edge which makes the difference between dull and cutting...
Heiner Muller was once without full recognition in his own country. The East German playwright had a festival of his works this month in Frankfurt, and has been praised by international audiences for plays like Hamletmaschine and Quartett. It's only now that his dramas, pointedly dealing with the theme of revolution betrayed, are being staged at home. If Muller, 61, were to dramatize the end of the Communist regime in East Berlin, he says, "it would be a tragedy about incompetence and stupidity." He adds that many figures in recent history wouldn't make strong fictional characters. One exception...
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Late String Quartets, Op. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135 (Vegh Quartett; Telefunken, 4 LPs, $27.92). These quartets are the summit of Beethoven's chamber music. It is music that makes no concessions, ei ther to brain or hand, and sets no store by charm. The Végh Quartett makes sense of these bristling compositions with their many movements, many rhythms, many ideas, abrupt changes of character. The group is most convincing in the melancholy opening fugue of the C-Sharp Minor but lacks the emotional reach required by the sudden deaths and harsh...
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