Oskar Kokoschka | Murderer, the Women’s Hope [full play]

murderer, the women’s hope

by Oskar Kokoschka

 

Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger

PERSONS

 

MAN

WOMAN

CHORUS: MEN and WOMEN

 

Night sky. Tower with large red iron grille as door; torches the only light; black ground, rising to the tower in such a way that all the figures appear in relief.

 

THE MAN in blue armor, white face, kerchief covering a wound, with a crowd of men—savage in appearance, gray-and-red kerchiefs, white-black-and-brown clothes, signs on their clothes, bare legs, long-handled torches, bells, din—creeping up with handles of torches extended and lights; wearily, reluctantly try to hold back the adventurer, pull his horse to the ground; he walks on, they open up the circle around him, crying out in a slow crescendo.

 

MEN. We were the flaming wheel around him,

 

We were the flaming wheel around you, assailant of locked fortresses!

 

Hesitantly follow him again in chain formation; he, with the torch bearer in front of him, heads the procession.

 

MEN. Lead us, pale one!

 

While they are about to pull his horse to the ground, women with their leader ascend steps on the left. 

 

WOMAN, red clothes, loose yellow hair, tall.

 

WOMAN, loud. With my breath I fan the yellow disc of the sun, my eye collects the jubilation of the men, their stammering lust prowls around me like a beast.

 

FEMALE ATTENDANTS separate themselves from her, only now catch sight of the stranger.

 

FIRST FEMALE ATTENDANT. His breath attaches itself to the virgin!

 

FIRST MAN to the others. Our master is like the moon that rises in the East.

 

SECOND GIRL, quiet, her face averted. When will she be enfolded joyfully?

Listening, alert, the CHORUS walks round the whole stage, dispersed in groups; THE MAN and the WOMAN meet in front of the gate.

(Pause.)

 

WOMAN observes him spellbound, then to herself. Who is the stranger that has looked on me?

GIRLS press to the fore.

 

FIRST GIRL recognizes him, cries out. His sister died of love.

 

SECOND GIRL. O the singing of Time, flowers never seen.

 

THE MAN, astonished; his procession halts. Am I real? What did the shadows say?

 

Raising his face to her.

 

Did you look at me, did I look at you?

 

WOMAN, filled with fear and longing. Who is the pallid man? Hold him back.

 

FIRST GIRL, with a piercing scream, runs back. Do you let him in? It is he who strangles my little sister praying in the temple.

 

FIRST MAN to the girl. We saw him stride through the fire, his feet unharmed.

 

SECOND MAN. He tortured animals to death, killed neighing mares by the pressure of his thighs.

 

THIRD MAN. Birds that ran before us he made blind, stifled red fishes in the sand.

 

THE MAN angry, heated. Who is she that like an animal proudly grazes amidst her kin?

 

FIRST MAN. She divines what none has understood.

 

SECOND MAN. She perceives what none has seen or heard.

 

THIRD MAN. They say shy birds approach her and let themselves be seized.

 

GIRLS in time with the men.

 

FIRST GIRL. Lady, let us flee. Extinguish the flares of the leader.

 

SECOND GIRL. Mistress, escape!

 

THIRD GIRL. He shall not be our guest or breathe our air. Let him not lodge with us, he frightens me.

 

MEN, hesitant, walk on, WOMEN crowd together anxiously. The WOMAN goes up to THE MAN, prowling, cautious.

FIRST GIRL. He has no luck.

 

FIRST MAN. She has no shame.

 

WOMAN. Why do you bind me, man, with your gaze? Ravening light, you confound my flame! Devouring life overpowers me. O take away my terrible hope—and may torment overpower you.

 

THE MAN, enraged. My men, now brand her with my sign, hot iron into her red flesh.

 

MEN carry out his order. First the CHORUS, with their lights, struggle with her, then the OLD MAN with the iron; he rips open her dress and brands her.

 

WOMAN, crying out in terrible pain. Beat back those men, the devouring corpses.

She leaps at him with a knife and strikes a wound in his side. THE MAN falls.

 

MEN. Free this man possessed, strike down the devil. Alas for us innocents, bury the conqueror. We do not know him.

 

THE MAN, in convulsions, singing with a bleeding, visible wound. Senseless craving from horror to horror, unappeasable rotation in the void. Birth pangs without birth, hurtling down of the sun, quaking of space. The end of those who praised me. Oh, your unmerciful word.

 

MEN. We do not know him; spare us. Come, you singing girls, let us celebrate our nuptials on his bed of affliction.

 

GIRLS. He frightens us; you we loved even before you came.

 

Three masked men on the wall lower a coffin on ropes; the wounded man, hardly stirring now, is placed inside the tower. WOMEN retire with the MEN. The OLD MAN rises and locks the door, all is dark, a torch, quiet, blue light above in the cage.

 

WOMAN, moaning and revengeful. He cannot live, nor die; how white he is!

 

She creeps round the cage like a panther. She crawls up to the cage inquisitively, grips the bars lasciviously, inscribes a large white cross on the tower, cries out.

Open the gate; I must be with him.

 

Shakes the bars in despair.

 

MEN and WOMEN, enjoying themselves in the shadows, confused. We have lost the key—we shall find it—have you got it?— haven't you seen it?—we are not guilty of your plight, we do not know you—

 

They go back again. A cock crows, a pale light rises in the background.

WOMAN slides her arm through the bars and prods his wound, hissing maliciously, like an adder. Pale one, do you recoil? Do you know fear? Are you only asleep? Are you awake? Can you hear me?

 

THE MAN, inside, breathing heavily, raises his head with difficulty; later, moves one hand; then slowly rises, singing higher and higher, soaring.

Wind that wanders, time repeating time, solitude, repose and hunger confuse me.

 

Worlds that circle past, no air, it grows long as evening.

 

WOMAN, incipient fear. So much light is flowing from the gap, so much strength from the gate, pale as a corpse he's turned.

 

Once more creeps up the steps, her body trembling, triumphant once more and crying out with a high voice. THE MAN has slowly risen, leans against the grille, slowly grows.

 

WOMAN weakening, furious. A wild beast I tame in this cage; is it with hunger your song barks?

 

THE MAN. Am I the real one, you the dead ensnared? Why are you turning pale?

 

Crowing of cocks.

 

WOMAN, trembling. Do you insult me, corpse?

 

THE MAN, powerfully. Stars and moon! Woman! In dream or awake, I saw a singing creature brightly shine. Breathing, dark things become clear to me. Who nourishes me?

 

WOMAN covers him entirely with her body; separated by the grille, to which she clings high up in the air like a monkey.

 

THE MAN. Who suckles me with blood? I devour your melting flesh.

 

WOMAN. I will not let you live, you vampire, piecemeal you feed on me, weaken me, woe to you, I shall kill you—you fetter me—you I caught and caged—and you are holding me—let go of me. Your love imprisons me—grips me as with iron chains—throttles me—let go—help! I lost the key that kept you prisoner.

 

Let’s go the grille, writhes on the steps like a dying annual, her thighs and muscles convulsed.

 

THE MAN stands upright now, pulls open the gate, touches the woman—who rears up stiffly, dead white—with his fingers. She feels that her end is near, highest tension, released in a slowly diminishing scream; she collapses and, as she falls, tears away the torch from the hands of the rising leader. The torch goes out and covers everything in a shower of sparks. He stands on the highest step; men and women who attempt to flee from him run into his way, screaming.

 

CHORUS. The devil! Tame him, save yourselves, save your selves if you can—all is lost!He walks straight towards them. Kills them like mosquitoes and leaves red behind. From very far away, crowing of cocks.

 

1907

  

*Reprinted from An Anthology of German Expressionist Drama, ed. by Walker H. Sokel (New York: Anchor, 1963), pp. 17-21.

© 1963 by Anchor Books.

____

First performed at the Kunstchau Theatre in Vienna in 1909, Murderer, the Women's Hope, by artist Oscar Kokoschka, was one of the seminal plays of German Expressionism. The shocking representation of the battle of the sexes, ends with everyone except the Man, dying. The Vienna premiere cause a great deal of controversy, as soldiers, watching the play from the edge of the garden, rushed through the barrier, a riot breaking out before the police arrived. Kokoschka, as well as his writer friends Adolf Loos and Karl Kraus, were issued a warning, but not arrested for disturbing the peace. But both public and press, for the most part, detested the play, describing it as a collection of "screaming images," and a "pretentious Decoration Drama."

The Weimar Republic: Germany 1918-1933 Weimar Nightfall | concert conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen / 2020

explaining to the us what evil is all about

by Douglas Messerli

 

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor) The Weimar Republic: Germany 1918-1933 Weimar Nightfall / Los Angeles Philharmonic / the concert I attended was on Sunday, February 16, 2020

 

As part of their investigation of the German Weimar era—that decadent period of German history before Hitler’s rise and the later pre-World War II atrocities—the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the other night, presented an amazing trio of works, conducted by its former director, Esa-Pekka Salonen: Paul Hindemith’s Murderer, Hope of Women (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen) based on the highly controversial play (it closed after a single performance) by artist/writer Oskar Kokoschka (a complete English translation of that play follows this review), Kurt Weill’s and Bertholt Brecht’s The Berlin Requiem in Potsdam Under the Oak Trees, and Weill and Brecht’s last collaboration, The Seven Deadly Sins.

       The great Bauhaus architect/designer Oskar Schlemmer did the original costumes, choreography, and sets for the Hindemith performance, which was so controversial that it was removed from the State Theater in Stuttgart in 1921, after only its second performance. This work might be one of the most often performed work of an absolute flop of first performances that ever existed.

     Despite its terribly dark tones, however, Hindemith’s 1919 work is not only highly lyrical, but filled with beautiful romantic flourishes, with 3 flutes, an English horn, rumbling brass, clarinets, drums, tam-tam, cymbals, strings, and 2 harps—along with a full chorus (in this case the talented Los Angeles Master Chorale, headed by Grant Gershom), and eight singers led by Madeleine Bradbury Rance (as the woman) and Christopher Purves (as the Man). In the Sunday production I saw Alaysha Fox replaced Anna Schubert as the First Maiden, and there are 2 others who observe the horrors of the woman and man in their sexual mis-match, ending in love and murder.*

 

     Hindemith, highly disturbed by his World War I service in the regimental band and later experiences deep in the trenches, came back from the War disorientated, but yet re-energized to create his musical compositions. He composed this work at the at the age of only 24.

     The LAPhil performed this work with their usual professional polish, soaring along with the composer’s score in its often lush rises and flourishes; yet I felt it seemed somehow a bit toned down, particularly after hearing, a couple of weeks ago, the absolutely thrilling renditions by Gustavo Dudamel of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky (a concert that I will never be able to remove from my head thank heaven). It may have been that the seemingly heavy metal cut-out shards created by director Simon McBurney and production designer Anna Fleischle to suggest the breakup of the Weimar world, may have slightly muted the normally glorious sounds of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Nonetheless, Salonen and the great orchestra he was conducting managed to lift up this intense narrative into the near stratosphere of Disney Hall.

      As a short prologue to this piece reminds us, all of the composers and writers involved in this project, having to escape Nazi Germany for their religious convictions and being classified by Hitler and others as “degenerate” artists, eventually made their way to the US, and ultimately arrived in Los Angeles, helping to create the long literary and musical legacy that survives still today.

      Escaping to Los Angeles, German authors along with Weill and Brecht attempted to bring their somewhat formulized notion of world-wide evil to the US, in the central piece of the evening, the delightfully evil Seven Deadly Sins, with two versions of a character named Anna (Nora Fischer, dressed in a slinky blue gown) and her theatrical other, in this case a dancer (Gabriella Schmidt).

      Together the two figures travel from their Louisiana home to visit the major cities of the US, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, seven cities of course, discovering their personal attachments to Sloth, Pride, Wrath, Gluttony, Lust, Greed, and Envy, yet gradually overcoming each before returning to their Louisiana home and, presumably, redemption.

     Here, with somewhat Brechtian staging, the singer and dancer do not remain on stage but move through the orchestral seats in order to engage the audience with their sins.

      All of their exploits are interspersed with a chorus of the family back home (Jarrett Ott, Christopher Purves, Peter Hoare, and Simon Bode) who, as Los Angeles Times reviewer Mark Swed described as appearing “more like East Side émigrés than Southerners. Then again, what did Brecht and Weill know about Louisiana?”

      I can just say that when Fischer sings that state’s name in German, it sent shivers down my spine, the same way Weill’s and Brecht’s great Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny made me feel about a state I could not even imagine living in, Alabama. In their works, in which the whole of the American continent was made to feel the same sins of the world they had had to abandon, they helped the culture to perceive they were not to be isolated from what was happening in the whole world, and, even more importantly, that they were not innocent from its sins. The Seven Deadly Sins were not “over there,” but scratching the backs of everyone in LOUisIANA, Al-abMAMA” and everywhere else where we might have lived.

     For the world in which we today live, there can be no better lessons than these and other European émigrés taught us through their arts. O please, send us your…tired, poor, and even your rich. We need them, as this LAPhil concert clearly reveals to us.

*For a full script of that play, see Murderer the Women’s Hope by Osksar Kokoschka on this blog. 

 

Los Angeles, February 20, 2020

Reprinted from World Arts Review (February 2020).

 

Jean-Claude van Itallie | The Serpent / 2020

a ceremony about evil

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jean-Claude van Itallie The Serpent / Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, directed by Ron Sossi / the production I saw with Howard N. Fox was on March 8, 2020

 

Let me begin this review with a series of appreciations. I truly admire Ron Sossi and all that he has done over now 50 years at the incredible Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in, first Hollywood, and soon after, West Los Angeles. There is to my thinking no more of an exciting company presenting US and European-born theater classics in the city. Some of the most exciting theater works I have experienced in this vast crucible of theatrical explorations has been at his Odyssey theater.  

 

    He’s gone everywhere, from Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound, Max Frisch, Bertolt Brecht, Stephen Sondheim and into this incredible season 50th-51st season, to Irene María Fornes, Gertrude Stein, Sam Shepard, and others—something you must simply bow down to. What other theater in the US might present the great singer of French Chansons, Julia Migenes on the very same day as Jean-Claude van Itallie’s 1968, The Serpent? It is truly astounding. Every season of the Odyssey’s schedule is exciting, offering enticingly original productions of new and older theatrical productions that excite me. I have praised so many of their productions that I nearly blush, as if I were a theater hack devoted to their remarkable annual seasons..

      The very thought, moreover, that he produced, as his company’s very second production in Spring 1970, only two years after the highly controversial late 60s production, is breath-taking. Los Angelenos must have felt their pulses expanding with wonderment. I wish I would have been there, the year Howard, my now husband and I, first met back in Wisconsin. Sossi is a master at recreating experimental theater in a way few others are in Los Angeles.

      The production that Howard and I saw the other day at the Odyssey, despite its engaging performers—among them Riley Rose Critchlow, Avery Dresel-Kurtz, Joseph Gilbert, Kristina Ladegaard, Marie Osterman, Anthony Rutowicz, Keaton Shyler, Ian Stewart Riley, Ahhei Togun, Terry Woodberry, Denis Yolén, and Peyton Young—appeared, after I watched tapes of the Chaikin-directed performances at his Open Theatre, just a bit too audience-friendly, perhaps even a little sanitized.

      For example, the tree containing the forbidden fruit in Chaikin’s version was made up of only males, mostly gay it appeared, hissing and lisping, as in their entanglement some shook their fingers between the crotches of the others, suggesting both rather phallic images as well as the duality of tongues with which the serpent spoke. In other scenes, the entire company groans and moans as if suffering the hell of their own evil behaviors.

     Of course, the version I saw in the tape was in a gritty black-and-white, while the Odyssey production was in muted colors, browns, whites, and dark reds. And, unlike Sossi’s cast, Chaikin’s worked with him for several months even before he brought in van Itallie to create a more coherent structure and a slight narrative thrust.

     In the end this work is more of a highly ritualized collage with dance and pantomime rather than a standard play. Van Itallie, himself, described his theater more as a ceremony that existed between the actors on the stage and its audience.

     Sossi clearly attempted to reiterate that relationship by initially having the cast members read of out some of the names of audience members (mine was among them), and later, after Eve gives in to the serpentine seduction, even passing out a few apples to audience members: the woman in front of me joyfully bit into one. Yet the Odyssey’s mostly West Side Los Angeles audience, I believe, were not quite ready to submit, as Chaikin’s late 60s audience might have been, to the experience of the Eucharistic sermon of man’s evil to his own kind—which includes not only the essential Eden scene, but the death of President Kennedy (Dresel-Kurtz plays Jackie), the shooting of Martin Luther King (performed by Woodberry), a wild sexual orgy as the cast, freed from their lack of knowledge, go into choreographed sexual passions, as well as the murder of Abel by Cain (Gilbert). One woman, in our audience, was evidently unprepared for the sexual energy released, howling loudly through the scene, as if she had never imagined sex pantomimed on stage. Surely in 1968, no one at the Open Theatre would have laughed out of what was clearly utter embarrassment.

 

    At other moments the audience seemed more contained than transformed by the ceremonial experience the director was attempting to create. The Beckettian-like lament—"I’m in the middle, having lost the beginning, and going to the end”—might have been lost for some of this audience members, although it says everything about the condition of those suddenly discovering that they are soon to die. As a critic, I often get asked by caring and well-intentioned women and men, “What do you think this means?”

     I don’t want, however, to suggest that Los Angeles audiences are not capable of enjoying profound theater. The more I attend this city’s theater events, the more profoundly I am moved by their willingness to attend and contemplate complex works, and this audience, in its sincere applause, totally embraced van Itallie’s work.

     One of the most touching moments—which I think moved every one of us—was Cain’s remorse for having killed his beloved brother because God had refused his sacred offerings. Just a few days earlier I had witnessed Queen Elizabeth’s sudden remorse for her beloved Deveraux’s death at the LAOpera. The absolute shock of what Cain has just done in this play presents an entirely new vision of what, in the Old Testament, is simply presented as an unforgiveable crime which dooms him to an expulsion as severe as Adam’s and Eve’s.

      Even Sossi seemed to suggest his own reservations about reviving such timely ensemble-based works.

 

                          Many of the ensemble projects of that time are difficult

                          to re-create, as they featured large casts and were highly

                          personal in terms of actor input and content…unique

                          products of their time and place. …At this point we have

                          no idea if this “Ceremony for Theatre” speaks to the

                          audience of today, yet so many of his themes are

                          universal enough to make me believe that it has a good shot.

 

     He argues, and think quite rightly, that despite those reservations, The Serpent was “do-able.” It is, and I truly appreciate this director’s willingness to dig back into that history to let us see a new vision of such an iconic work.

 

Los Angeles, March 11, 2020

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (March 2020).