Word: wedekind
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Director Peter Sellars chose to combine two Wedekind plays--Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box--that were treated in Berg's opera Lulu. Wedekind, writing in the late 19th century, deliberately set out to shock and horrify the conventional polite society of his time. Some of the melodramatic trappings of his play stem from his desire to force members of what he saw as a stuffy and hypocritical society to recognize the sex, passion and greed that lay at the foundation of their relationships. In Lulu, Wedekind describes the rise and fall of a peculiarly passionless beauty who works herself...
Although he writes in a style of studied unconventionality and portrays his depraved characters sympathically, Wedekind nevertheless wrote a morality play. The characters are not human beings but types and all receive their just deserts by the final curtain. However, no sense of optimism or serene belief in retribution lighten the atmosphere of depravity and despair. The world remains cold, detached, evil--and absurd...
...Wedekind was undeniably an influence on Brecht, who has the same disdain for interior logic, presents characters as symbols, and portrays a similarly seamy and exploitative world. But Wedekind's people lack the earthiness of Brecht's; their passions seem forced and silly. Brecht managed to create recognizable, if exaggerated, people. But Wedekind's characters are pale and disembodied ghosts. This failure flaws the play and riddles it with inconsistencies that make the characters hard to portray, the play hard to follow, and leaves it ultimately insubstantial. Wedekind brilliantly creates an atmosphere; he simply cannot create people to inhabit...
...performances of Lulu's successive lovers vary according to how skillfully Wedekind wrote the parts. Christian Clemenson is delightfully boorish as the crude Dr. Goll. His braying inanities lighten the otherwise disjointed first act. Brian McCue's portrayal of Scwarz, however, is uneven, improving considerably from the first act to the second. When he first meets Lulu in the opening of the play, McCue relies too much on a series of mannerisms--rising on his toes, rubbing his hands, pacing around briskly--that distract attention from his passionate words. Japes Emerson turns in a sporadic performance, though he is cursed...
GRACE SHOHET portrays the play's most interesting and controversial character, the lesbian Countess Geschwitz, who sacrifices everything for Lulu. Wedekind created the only fully rounded human portrait in the role of Countees Geschwitz, and Shohet infuses it with pathos. Her despairing speech in the last act strikes one of the few sincere notes in an otherwise emotionally detached production...