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Laughs and Torments
by Amy Krivohlavek
Krankenhaus Blues reviewed October 7, 2005
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A neurotic Jewish playwright, a crippled psychotic actress, and a disabled, gay black mime sit together in a German hospital, biding their time until a Nazi nurse puts them out of their misery. While this may sound like nothing more than the makings of a severely misconceived joke, these are the vital ingredients of Sam Forman's Krankenhaus Blues, a surrealist riff on disability, genocide, and show business.
Forman's astonishingly fresh script—combined with Donna Mitchell's precise direction and, for my money, what may be the best acting the city has to offer right now—makes Krankenhaus Blues more than a theatrical gem. It's also a theatrical rarity—provocative theater that very unselfconsciously challenges its audience members to reconsider their perceptions while it simultaneously entertains them.
On a desolate stage, we meet Anka (Christine Bruno), Bruno (Bill Green), and Fritz (Joe Sims). Anka, the actress, begins the show tied into a straightjacket. She sings and speaks of the misery of a sullied acting career, as well as her amorous relationship with her father. Her new friend Fritz is a master of commedia dell'arte and a mime, a man of such self-professed otherness that everything about him, right down to his spine, is political.
Bruno, the neurotic playwright, is the transplant to their world, and he appears with a wild tale about a dream in which he's kidnapped by Nazi doctors in Tompkins Square Park. We can never be sure whether this is his dream or reality, and in the end it doesn't really matter. For better or worse, we are all stuck together in the Krankenhaus. And it is here, in the most unlikely of places and with the most likely of inhabitants, that we discover the most poignant truths about life.
Because the show's best moments lie in unexpected (and often humorous) turns of events, I won't divulge many specific details. But as the play unfolds, we learn more and more about the characters; they speak their truth out of tormented lives, and out of this truth Forman brings forth pathos, irony, and spectacular humor. You will laugh. And often.
Forman has divided his play into brief vignettes, introduced by projected titles and connected by Hannah Hens-Piazza's stirring viola underscoring. Hens-Piazza not only accompanies the actors during the script's sung sections but also adds punctuation to their spoken dialogue. This musical tweaking effectively colors the actors' words, appropriately lightening or darkening the mood.
Each of the performers offers a fully embodied, almost frighteningly acute character study. Bruno sings with her heart in her voice, and her monologue to her dead father brims with emotional tension. With his perfectly calibrated deadpan delivery, Sims brings a captivating, stoic assurance to Fritz. But as talented as these two are, it is Green's Bruno who carries the show. He makes neurotic tendencies refreshingly lovable, not clichéd, and his drawn-out monologue about the different types of cheese (yes, cheese!) is peppered with sensitivity, personality, wit, and charm.
Mitchell's direction effectively conveys the characters' stark isolation, but she also finds creative and meaningful ways to bring them into proximity with one another. Kimi Maeda's minimalist set and costumes convey an appropriate Germanic austerity.
The brilliance of Krankenhaus Blues hit me full force near the end of the show, in an exchange between Bruno and Fritz. The needy, neurotic Bruno stands in front of the audience, employing typical theatrical gimmickry to please and entertain them. When Bruno invites Fritz to act something out with him, Fritz protests that the "whole meta-theatrical, self-reflexive thing has just gotten so played out."
Instead, Fritz wants to see real people with real stories onstage. He argues, "Here we are—blessed with this incredible opportunity to speak for all these disenfranchised people…and whadda we choose to do with this giant responsibility? We make a smart-ass, half-baked statement about theater people. Aren't we sooo detached? Sooo cool? So downtown."
In his indictment of self-indulgent meta-theater, Fritz argues for theater that works at the forefront of social change. He also illuminates the message at the heart of Krankenhaus Blues. Here are real people with real stories, but maybe, Forman suggests, it is only under the most surreal of conditions and in the craziest of scenarios that we will listen to them and believe their tales.
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Blue Heron Arts Center
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Category: Comedy
Written by: Sam Forman
Directed by: Donna Mitchell
Produced by: Visible Theatre
Opened: October 7, 2005
Closed: October 23, 2005
Running Time: 70 minutes
Theater: Blue Heron Arts Center
Address:
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Tickets: $15.00
aea member discount
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Creative Team
Written by: Sam Forman
Directed by: Donna Mitchell
Produced by: Angela DeMatteo/Visible Theatre
Light Designer: Jessica Lynn Hinkle
Original Music: Hannah Hens-Piazza
Set Designer: Kimi Maeda
Costume Designer: Kimi Maeda
Original Artwork: Michael Haertlein
Artistic Director: Krista Smith-Quattrone
Cast
Christine Bruno as Anka
Bill Green as Bruno
Joe Sims as Fritz
Crew
Stage Manager: Anajose Aldrete
Assistant Stage Manager: Angela DeMatteo
Light Board Op: Kate VanDevender
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