Wittenberg

Luther's thoughts remain below with Gretschen (Emily Clare Zempel); Faustus' too

The Rep Stage in Columbia is offering an exuberant production of Wittenberg, a new kind of play by David Davolos, which is a cause for celebration (to 9/13). Featuring the likes of Dr. Faustus, Martin Luther, Hamlet, and the Eternal Feminine it's anybody's guess as to where fact meets fiction, if it ever does, in this post-modernist send-up of Reformation mores in particular and the Western tradition in general.

The recipient of Philadelphia's Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play (2008), the work was successfully mounted at the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival earlier this summer and appears here with the same cast and director.

Wittenberg is an imaginative and generative text that drives the other elements of the show. Director Tony Tsendeas, the design team, and the performers have taken that script and run with it. The operative term in this entire process is creative. From the moment the curtain opens on Paul Christensen's whimsical scenic design of the Renaissance to the split-set closing, wistfully lighted by Jay Herzog, every aspect of the production reflects a fresh look. The play comes at you a lot like life during its best moments: fast and furious, you'll only truly understand and appreciate it after it passes, but you'll be thankful for the experience.

At its core, this is a comedy about corruption: religious, in the institution of the church; scientific, in Ptolemaic versus Copernican revolutions; and monarchical, "there's something rotten in Denmark"! So the dispute between Faustus and Luther, resolved in the sweet Prince, is not about ends but means. Both are disestablishmentarians (you could look it up!) at heart, and both believe that access to truth comes one on one, not through intermediaries.

Wittenberg provides a fractured take on literary and historical causality, seen through the eyes of a much re-imagined cast of characters. They are all walking and talking narratives, but how those stories are written is the source of the play's great fun. The Dr. Faustus here has substituted psychoanalysis and alternative medicine for alchemy in his bag of tricks, and seems more interested in chasing after the fairer sex than pursuing knowledge. Played by Seth Reichgott with probing directness and verbal agility, this rapping shock doc is a wonder to behold, whether he's feeding theses to the perpetually blocked Luther portrayed by the wonderfully comic Michael Stebbins or sorting out the complexes (and there are many) of a delightfully indecisive Hamlet played by Michael Feldsher.

Mr. Stebbins gets positively bug-eyed at the mention of papal indulgences and the church emissary, Dr. Tetzel. The purchase of an indulgence has the ring of a presidential pardon, where offenders solicit dispensation for past events, who also seem to get a free pass for those sins going forward. Mr. Feldsher gives us Hamlet, a dude who can't get it done - either in his personal or professional life - but when it comes to playing games he's without equal. There's definitely a method in his madness!

Emily Clare Zempel as the Eternal Feminine lifts her pursuers ever upward either as the beer-serving wench Gretchen or femme fatale Helen. Ms. Zempel loves them and leaves them mostly playing a high-pitched party Girl or a throaty vixen. Even though the playwright may have thrown one feminine icon too many into the hopper with the introduction of the Virgin Mary, sort of a sacred muse here, the visitation and stage business are otherworldly and consistent with Hamlet's life of waking nightmares. And Lady Voltemand, the final character played by Ms. Zempel, seems less like a servant and more like a plot device.

This is a play that you have to take on its own terms. You can't really use traditional means of assessing it - dramatic conflict, character, tightness - no more than you can accuse a modernist text of being solipsistic or lacking in plot. It seems to undermine its own criticism, surely a sign of a post-structural text at work, or more appropriately at play. You can't criticize it for being too wordy (and it is) since it is a play about words, words, words. Ultimately, you'll have to decide whether or not it worked for you; it did for me.

The countless allusions to Shakespeare and other writers - philosophical and literary, past and especially future - are funny and give the audience permission to laugh (even if they don't quite catch up with it all) and they do throughout. The breakneck pace of the dialogue, especially during the verbal jousting, is at times difficult to process and some of the scenes drag on, but these were minor blemishes on the whole.

The references on the internet seem to suggest the play bears a resemblance to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Forget about Tom Stoppard and Steve Martin. The director told us that the writer was inspired by Steve Allen's television series Meeting of Minds (1977-1981), where actors would play world historical figures, using their actual words, discussing philosophy and religion. To me Wittenberg feels a lot like Baz Luhrmann's movie Moulin Rouge with the accelerated wordplay standing in for the rapid cuts, and the constant employment of anachronisms.

Scatological humor abounds from the Bunghole of a Rathskeller, and the priest's papal visions, to his legendary constipation, which was later immortalized in Erik Erikson's psychobiography, Young Man Luther. As I once heard it: for want of a bowel movement a revolution was launched. Suffice it to say the alimentary and theological breakthrough moment occurs simultaneously.

The play's sexual gamboling may or may not appeal and depicting saints and clergy as figures of fun, may or may not strike you as blasphemy, but in the context of the play have a particular logic.

The costumes of Norah Worthington are impressive for their range and originality, while the sound design of Chas Marsh traverses the monastic to the modern. Props of Liza Davies nicely accentuate the characters' worlds. There's plenty of intriguing, visually arresting stage business throughout.

Sound check: Low to moderate, with some high sound levels during emotional outbursts and use of some sound effects

Program notes: Very good, might have benefited from a glossary and scenic outline with song list. Check out www.ardentheatre.org/2008/wittenberg.html for a Supplementary Study Guide, which includes a plot summary

Applause meter: Highly recommended, 3 ½ hands

Runtime: About 2 hours and 10 minutes with an intermission

Photo credits: Stan Barouh