2 x Huppert: Live in NYC

Isabelle Huppert loves to challenge herself. As I’ve noted several times before on this blog, her choice of film work has always involved her playing new types of characters while continuing her dual specialization of women on the brink of a breakdown and complex women who are often “closed off” emotionally with others (or downright brusque). She can, in effect, do no wrong onscreen. 

Onstage, she challenges herself by not only appearing in straightforward productions of classic works (none of which we see over here) but also starring in avant-garde productions and works by new playwrights. I have written about her last three appearances in plays in NYC here (The Maids), here (Phaedra(s)), and here (The Mother). In each case, as with this current item, her performances have been uniformly excellent while the material was flawed to one degree or another. 

Such was the case with her recent stint at NYU’s Skirball Hall doing a handful of performances of the high-energy, one-woman piece Mary Said What She Said — a play that is so rigidly (and familiarly) stylized that it seems like a parody of what some perceive “avant-garde theater” to be.

Mary is written by playwright Darryl Pinckney as a one-woman monologue delivered by Mary Stuart (1542-87), aka “Mary, Queen of Scots.” She moves through situations in her life (with the dialogue drawn from Mary’s own letters), providing a kind of emotional summing-up of her very active existence. One could do some research into her life before seeing the show and still be mystified, because we are given her POV on events, but they are shuffled throughout and what we mostly have are the traumatic highlights delivered in a cascade of verbiage.

The play is thus intended to just wash over the viewer, as Mary speaks very fast, then very slowly, then very fast again. She poses in tableau-like fashion on an empty but bright-white stage (later filled with fog that resembles clouds) and moves around in dance steps at other times. At points she speaks live onstage; at others we hear recordings of her voice (and recordings of a man and child, presumably her son, the future King James).

Perhaps Pinckney included some of the above in his script, but these stylistic inclusions would seem to be inspirations provided by the director, Robert Wilson is a Texan who made his name with Einstein on the Beach and has had his productions scored by cult rockers including Tom Waits and Lou Reed. (The score for Mary was written by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi; his work was at its most memorable when it most resembled the work of Philip Glass.)

Mary was the fifth Wilson show I’ve seen (The Black Rider being the most memorable) and it’s best to come right out and say it: He’s a remarkably “familiar” director, meaning that his stylized sets, costumes, and behavioral tics for his actors seem fresh and new the first time you see them, but by the second time they lose their luster. By the third Wilson play you see, you begin to think you’re watching someone (as the Brits say) “taking the piss” out of the material by presenting some avant-garde techniques that he’s used several times before and others that were fashioned by others long before his career began.

So, with Mary we have a case where the stagecraft is a drawback, but the lead performer is exquisite. Huppert clearly loved Wilson and Pinckney’s “shifts” for her character, as she plays her at different ages and in different situations, all of it funneled through a continual recitation. She gives it her all and does a magnificent job of conveying Mary’s conflicting emotions and the many dangerous situations that her regal status has placed her in.

In the meantime, one thinks of Wilson’s preceding plays (“Yup, saw that in his Woyzeck adaptation.” “Oops, that’s on the verge of that kitsch insanity from POEtry.”) One also thinks of German Expressionist theater, just imbued with brighter primary colors. Here one thinks of the work that Beckett wrote for Billie Whitelaw, very specifically the monologue “Not I,” wherein Whitelaw had to deliver a text at top speed while the audience saw only her mouth. In other words, Mr. Wilson, (as friend Stephen puts it, per an old quip by Jerry Lewis), “we’ve seen the dress.”

One other difficulty plagued those who don’t know French (or, as in my case, can follow it when it’s spoken slowly): The surtitles provided at NYU’s Skirball Hall were in a gray type shown on a black background. (I was in a front upper balcony, center seat.) Given that the titles have to flash very quickly in the scenes where Mary is racing through a quick, frenzied torrent of words, one could only glaze over and just marvel at the brilliance that is Huppert, without giving a look at the dim, hard-to-read translations of what she was saying.

So, I’m still glad I saw the show despite the dreary repetition to be found in Wilson’s stagecraft (and the high price, given that the only lower-priced seats were “partial view” — lovely!), since every opportunity to see Huppert performing live should be pounced upon, as she is one of the finest actresses on the planet and is indeed eager to take on new challenges with every production.

*****

Huppert in basic black.
(Akin to her outfit at
L'Alliance; this photo
is available as a cardboard
standee (!) online.)

A quieter, calmer, less “produced” event featuring Huppert took place on March 3 at L’Alliance (formerly the French Institute Alliance Francaise). In this 90-minute presentation she read five stories by Guy de Maupassant. And again, it’s not like she needed to prove her bona fides as a hypnotic performer, but she was wonderful in a subdued set (a desk and chair combination, a music stand, and a chair and small side table). 

Here the words were everything and she did justice to them. (The readings were in French with very readable surtitles.) She read the stories directly from sheets of paper but was clearly familiar with them enough so that she could look up from the page at certain points, make gestures to underscore certain lines, act out unfinished exclamations, and at times sneak in a look at the audience to bring a certain point home.

The five stories she read were “The Confession,” “The Father,” “Simon’s Papa,” “The Jewels,” “The Necklace.” Maupassant was a master of the short story,  but the tales she read here did not all have twist endings of the sort that inspired later short story writers. In fact the first four stories were all slices of life that ended quite suddenly. It was only in “The Necklace” that the latter part of the story leads up to a very neat little twist at the end.

A 1974 telefilm
based on Maupassant
starring La Huppert.

This was certainly not a “show,” and it did not allow Huppert to show the range of her emotions in the way that Mary did. However, it was nice to see her in a more relaxed mood — even as she dazzled in Mary, it was still an exhausting piece to sit through. At the Maupassant reading, she was relaxed but still was able to draw the audience in through the tone of her voice and the above-mentioned gestures and movements. (She paced a bit back and forth between stories — perhaps excess energy left over from Mary?)

Whatever she is doing in the public eye, Huppert commits to at a very intense level. Thus, seeing her reading some classic fiction was a much simpler but very definite delight.

Note: All the Mary Said What She Said photos are © Lucie Jansch.

Put them all together, they spell…: Huppert in ‘The Mother’

Huppert, official portrait for
The Mother (photo: Peter Lindbergh)

When you have the opportunity to see one of the finest actresses in the world in live performance, you should jump at the chance. Especially if she is Isabelle Huppert, and even if she appears in a play as obvious and belabored as The Mother, currently at the Atlantic Theater Company in Manhattan (now through April 13).

Huppert is a miraculous performer who seems to choose her roles on the basis of how much they will challenge her and how complicated — and tormented — these women are. In the process she has created an incomparable portrait gallery that gets better with each year, even when the films or plays she stars in are significant only because she is in them.

Such is the case with The Mother, a modernist empty-nester lament in which the titular character, portrayed perfectly by Huppert, has lost her mind because her children have grown up and left home. The unseen daughter isn’t that much of a loss to her, but her son… well, therein lies the drama (and dark comedy and sleek stagecraft).

The opening scene finds Anne (Huppert), a jumpy wife, greeting her husband as he comes home from work with accusations and insults. Then we see the same scene in a less contentious mode. That pattern continues for the whole play — first we view events from Anne’s shattered perspective and then we see a more sedate version. Anne is a Frenchwoman living in the U.S. (one assumes the change in the play was made to accommodate Huppert’s strong French accent) with a busy workaholic husband (Chris Noth), who may be having an affair or just stays overtime at work to avoid Anne.

Their daughter is never seen and barely referred to, but her son (played by African American actor Justice Smith) is her pride and joy — and she is overjoyed when he argues with his girlfriend (Odessa Young) and ends up back at the family home.

Anne’s version of things includes the characters making declarative statements about themselves that are remarkably unsubtle — this is one of the play’s surprises that rather quickly tires itself out. Anne tells her hubby “I’ve been had” (in reference to getting married and having kids), the son’s girlfriend proclaims “I’m young and beautiful,” and the son announces to his mother at one point that he will hug her very tightly (the second half of that declaration would constitute a spoiler — and is subsequently undone when we leave Anne’s mind).

One could blame the fact that The Mother is a translated play for the intermittently stodgy dialogue, but Florian Zeller is a critically lauded French playwright and the translator here is Christopher Hampton, who makes a specialty of adapting such things to English. One can take comfort in the fact that the play is only 85 minutes long and the central reason for attending, Huppert, is sitting onstage as the audience files in. (She is reading a book, hides her face behind said book, making mischievous faces and yawning every so often.)

The stagecraft adds to the play’s general air of discomfort. Drug vials and bottles of wine are hidden below and behind an ultra-modern couch, projected signs on the back wall give us the numbers of the versions of scenes (“un,” “deux,” “trois”), and a microphone is situated at the edge of the stage so that Anne can deliver a nervous speech about her son (useful here as a dodge to shift our attention from the movement of furniture on the set).

The cast of The Mother: Smith, Huppert, Young, Noth.

The performers make the most of the material and add emotion to what is an overly simplistic scenario. Odessa Young admirably plays the son’s girlfriend and two other fantasy figures in Anne’s visions. Justice Smith has the most difficult role, as the barely sketched son who primarily tries to avoid his mother’s overly Freudian embrace (at one point the very drunk Anne does indeed straddle her son on the floor). Chris Noth lends shading to the “Father,” who is alternately a caring husband and an adulterous prick.

Huppert has inhabited this terrain before, as an incestuous mom in Christophe Honoré’s Ma Mere (2004). Here she works on several levels, being at once neurotic, stubborn, caring, cruel, schizo, and also very sexy. Huppert is one of the most fearless performers currently working, and here that includes playing a 47-year-old mother who dons a red dress and hose and garters onstage at one point.

As I noted the last time I reviewed Huppert onstage, she is the primary reason to see The Mother. In this case, the “queen of meltdowns” plays a woman who is already on the edge when the play begins.

As she has done so often onscreen, she exquisitely incarnates a woman who is on a downward spiral and in the process inspires admiration for her craft, if not deep sympathy for the character.

Better than her material: Isabelle Huppert in ‘Phaedra(s)’

Isabelle Huppert is a fearless performer, whose presence in a film or play is often the No. 1 incentive to see it, as she is constantly working to challenge herself and chooses to appear in the most difficult and varied projects imaginable. Few other stars make such a concerted effort to keep their work fresh and unpredictable.

Often, though, she is the best thing about a given work. Case in point was Phaedra(s), a “triptych” of three one-act plays that appeared at the BAM “Next Wave” festival from Sept. 13-18. The production was a pretentious mix of grandiose themes, shrill action, and bewildering tangents.

I've talked on the Funhouse TV show about the two reasons I think Huppert is the finest actress working in film today. The first is that she is an absolute master at depicting characters experiencing a breakdown — be it an emotional, psychological, or physical breakdown, there are few performers currently working anywhere in the world who can do this in as deft a way as Huppert.

The other aspect of her work that is so impressive is that she is willing to play unlikeable characters, and in fact seems to seek those kinds of multidimensional roles out — not villains, mind you, but women who are often abrasive or selfish or emotionally distant (as people frequently are in real life). American stars love to be loved — it's the clearest path to good reviews and Oscars, so they steer clear of the types of characters that Huppert pursues and then incarnates to perfection. (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Sean Penn had a heyday doing those kinds of parts, but both seem to have fallen into the wilderness.)

Her interest in conflicting emotions and emotional meltdowns clearly drew her to Phaedra(s), the brainchild of director Krzysztof Warlikowski. He and many of the cast and crew are Polish, although the play was developed and first staged in Paris, and later brought to London and NYC, where English subtitles were projected above the stage. Warlikowski decided to join together three one-acts that tackle the Phaedra/Hippolytus legend in very different ways.

The first piece, by the Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad, is the closest to the original myth, about a woman who falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus, is spurned by him, accuses him of having raped her and, after he is put to death by his father, kills herself. Huppert first played the goddess Aphrodite, then Phaedra, who in this incarnation does sleep with Hippolytus.

The piece was rendered in a hyper-minimalist fashion but, to put a modernist spin on the proceedings, Hippolytus is introduced to us speaking into a video camera (we see him from behind as he stands in a Lucite “room” that was rolled onto and off of the stage). The play is preceded by an Arabic rock tune performed beautifully, with a dancer doing a sexy “exotic” routine that seems included solely to indicate (like the video) that this is a multilayered work.

The second play, by British cult figure Sarah Kane (whose suicide at 28 looms large in her legend), is a modern-day variation on the tale, with Hippolytus (Andrzej Chyra) as a spoiled playboy, whose stepmom Phaedra gives him a blow job before she learns that he's been sleeping with his stepsister (her daughter). Warlikowski chose to have this play take place almost entirely in the Lucite room (“they're like caged animals, see? The modern world is like a multimedia prison cell, folks!”).

A TV set is on during this piece and it shows the Psycho shower scene in slow-motion on a loop, synchronized to the violence of Hippolytus' actions. Again, a message as subtle as a flying mallet, and a thoroughly distracting touch that would better serve a gallery installation than a play.

Between the second and third plays was an interlude in which the sexy dancer came out and performed her exotic shimmy in spangly bra and panties. At one point she narrowly avoided a wardrobe malfunction (for a production with so much sex in it, there was no nudity).

The “industrial” sounding music increased in speed and served as the only element that distinguished the dance routine from something you’d see in a nice hipster “modern burlesque” show. (“Sexy for the men *and* the ladies in the audience!”) What it had to do with the legend of Phaedra was… exactly nothing.

The third and last one-act was a thematically related piece by South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, in which famous author Elizabeth Costello (Huppert) is interviewed on a French TV talk show by a chatty host (Chyra) about the sexual relationships in ancient times between gods and humans. This was the “comedy” of the evening but it clumsily switched gears to find the author and the talk show host suddenly acting out dialogue from Racine’s Phaedra.

Despite the fact that there was a lighter tone to Coetzee’s play, one still got the impression of watching a spoof of avant-garde theater. Productions at BAM frequently give off that impression — it has, of course, been the NYC home for many Robert Wilson productions, each one of which seems to be a carbon copy of the one that preceded it, albeit using a different primary color palette.

The final distractions included in the production were clips from the two films shown during the Coetzee play. The first was from Frances, showing Frances Farmer (Jessica Lange) receiving electroshock therapy and the “state of the art” lobotomy that jumbled her mind for the rest of her life; the second was from Pasolini’s Teorema, showing a god in human form (Terence Stamp) coming on to a human (Silvana Mangano). 

The fact that the clips were (again) heavily distracting from the piece we were watching was a given — but the presence of the Frances clip was indeed baffling (so much so I don’t remember how/why it was shoehorned into the proceedings).

Throughout the evening — have I forgotten to mention that the production ran close to three and a half hours? — it was apparent that Huppert’s performance was superb and the plays were interesting at best, overblown at worst. The one lengthy scene that didn’t involve Huppert — in the Kane play, which was started before the single intermission and concluded afterward — found Hippolytus (Chyra) and a priest (Alex Descas, familiar from the films of Claire Denis and Jim Jarmusch) discussing the suicide of Phaedra. Both actors did a fine job with the scene, but Huppert was sorely missed — her energy had been driving the proceedings, taking our attention away from the gimmicks and messages that infused the material.

For over three hours Huppert simmered, suffered, seduced, and exploded (on at least three occasions she screamed “Je l'aiiiiiiame!” – “I love him!”). Her portrait gallery of multidimensional characters was enhanced by a trio of bravura performances in what was otherwise an unpredictable but wildly overblown affair.

On Saturday Sept. 17, Huppert did a Q&A about the play at BAM (no recordings or photos allowed). She spoke with philosophy prof (and devout Bowie fan) Simon Critchley about her approach to acting and her answers were, unsurprisingly, direct and matter-of-fact.

“I don't have a theoretical approach,” she declared, adding that there is “no mission” involved in her performances. “The story matters very little for me,” she stressed — for her it is all about "bringing the vision of the director” to life. She referred to her work with theater directors and filmmakers as both a “secret conversation” and “an existential adventure” (she excused herself for the grandiose sound of this last phrase).

The audience Q&A portion of the event was, true to form, filled with audience members making lengthy statements about themselves before asking their questions. (This is a characteristic of so many Q&A sessions with artists and entertainers in NYC that it almost becomes a parody of itself.) The only one that was intriguing, albeit beside the point, was from a gent who claimed he had been unable to speak to Jean Seberg when he met her and was similarly silenced when he met Huppert years before.

His question (when it was finally broached) was about the role of Joan of Arc. Huppert noted that she worked with Seberg (on Le Grand Delire in 1975 when Isabelle was 22 and Seberg was making her next-to-last film, four years before her tragic death at 41) and got the chance to talk with her about having worked with Otto Preminger (Huppert made her English-language debut in Preminger's failed 1975 thriller Rosebud). She commented on her own experience playing Joan of Arc in an oratorio in which she was suspended 32 feet above the stage on a small platform.

She had no further remarks about Seberg, but stressed again that she, Isabelle, performed her roles to make the character “live” and to collaborate with certain directors. Her track record is certainly unblemished because, even if the film or theater production she's starring in is sub par, she is consistently superb. 

Note: I was unable to identify the photographers who took the images above; if those photographers would like me to credit them (or to remove the image), please drop a line to ed at mediafunhouse dot com.

On the 'vulgarization' of Genet's 'The Maids'

Isabelle Huppert can do wrong. Well, she can appear (and has) in films that aren't quite up to her standard of quality from time to time, but even in those she has given nuanced, detailed performances, making the films at least worth checking out, if not remembering. The notion of her performing in a production of Genet's classic The Maids is thus kind of a dream come true: the perfect actress meets the perfect role (that of Solange, the elder sister).

But the production of the play created at the Sydney Theatre Company that is now being staged in NYC at City Center is an “updating” with a grand new physical presentation and dialogue that has been vulgarized (plenty of fucks and cunts can be heard in the dialogue) and updated to the 21st–century with pop culture references to match (among them, a namecheck of designer Alexander McQueen and a dumb-ass interpolation of “Hi-Ho” from the Disney Snow White).

The updates are felt right from the beginning, as “the Madame” (Cate Blanchett, actually the character Claire as the Madame) makes herself up, while her playful, childlike maid (Huppert as Solange assuming the role of Claire) does crazy exercise-ish dance moves on the bed while the Velvet Underground's “I'll Be Your Mirror” is pumped through the house loud speakers (see, the women are sisters and role-players – they're mirrors, see?). While it is a joy to see Blanchett glamorizing herself while Huppert, legs parted, does some very sexual calisthenics on the bed, the scene is a pointless addition that alerts the audience to the fact that this will be a very “light” production of the play.

But that isn't all we see – director Benedict Andrews and Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Andrew Upton's super-techno updating of the play (“Genet might be a great playwright, but a little mixed media can't hurt!”) means that a giant video screen is above the bedroom set. On the screen we see still-frame details of flowers, the Madame's dresses, shoes, and the like; we also see a different angle on the action (Blanchett's shoes, Huppert lying on the ground, the women looking into mirrors as they make themselves up) and actions that take place offstage.

Herein lies the most abrasive portion of this reviewer's experience seeing the play – I bought a ticket for a nosebleed seat in the back of the mezzanine specifically because it seemed to be well-located in relation to the stage and because the seat in question was not one labeled “obstructed view.” But it did have an obstructed view of the production as a whole – the kind and generous folks at the Lincoln Center Festival and City Center didn't bother to note when one bought a ticket that if you sat in the mezzanine, the video screen would be blocked by the underside of the upper balcony.

So I can report only on what appeared on the very bottom quadrant of the video screen, because my entire section was indeed one with an obstructed view. From what I could see of it, however, the technique was wildly unnecessary and simply intended to “soup up” the proceedings.

What I could see quite clearly was the video cameraman hidden behind the nearly transparent wall. This is an “effect” intended by our two Genet revisionists. What it succeeds in doing – and not in a good way – is distracting us from the actresses trying to breathe life into characters who have been denuded-beyond-denuding so we can watch a technician feverishly rolling a camera back and forth, doing his work all throughout the play. (Genet preferred his “layering” in the casting – wanting teenaged boys to play the maids – rather than in the staging and set design.)

So where one sits in City Center can make the production even more irritating (and the costly kind of irritating to boot). But onto the other changes made to the play by director Andrews – who is hailed in the press materials as “one of Australia's most regarded theatrical talents” (not highly regarded, just regarded), but who definitely seems to have a spiritual connection to his countryman Baz “let's update this storyline – our audience has no attention span!” Luhrmann.

Andrews stages The Maids primarily as a comedy. The tone given to the material, the delivery and pauses the actresses give to their lines, the constant rewrites of the lines (I'd swear I heard the phrase “old school” go by at one point), and the fact that so much of it was staged as farce, not drama, made certain that the audience could yuk it up.

Perhaps Andrews and Upton felt that the play needed a modern “tone” and that would be tongue-in-cheek. The manner in which the play is usually staged was reproduced in the American Film Theater's splendid 1974 film of the play starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York.

That dramatic, heavily ceremonial tone is obviously something Andrews and Upton wished to “improve” upon, thus the farcical tone of his production – which then turns starkly dramatic every so often, when Andrews chose to return to the original text. The shift in tone dilutes the drama and seems to cast a pall over the audience, who, during the performance I saw, seemed disappointed by the dramatic moments and waiting with baited breath to laugh again. (It's the Baz Luhrmann Effect – keep things light and breezy!)

Lastly, there's the matter of casting. The 13 performances of the play are selling out in Manhattan because of the stellar duo in the lead roles. Blanchett is fresh off of winning an Oscar, and Huppert is arguably the best actress on the planet, so the two seem like a “dream team” in a well-known play with sexual/psychological/political overtones. (The last-mentioned aspect of the play is almost buried entirely in Andrews and Upton's vision, by the way.)

There is a definite oddness to the pairing, though, as Huppert is actually French and speaks heavily accented English (but pronounces the few French phrases and names that have been retained beautifully, as could be expected). Blanchett, for her part, starts out the play speaking in a British “posh” accent (when playing the Madame), and then returns to her own native Aussie accent (this being a production from Oz, after all) for the rest of the show.

Thus, playing two sisters who have presumably lived their whole life together in France, you have a real Frenchwoman and a lady from Oz. NYT critic Ben Brantley (who never met an encomium he didn't like) praised this casting, declaring that it “discounts any possibility of our accepting The Maids on easy naturalistic terms.” Good try, Ben (calm down, man!), but your mention of Huppert's accent being “unintelligible” means that the device is a failure. And it is.

To make the production even more odd, Andrews decided to vary the casting of the Madame away from the usual sort of actress who would play the role (an older aristocratic type, like Vivien Merchant in the 1974 AFT version). Instead he has cast Elizabeth Debicki (one of the stars of the Luhrmann “soup this up!” Great Gatsby), a sexy young actress who positively looms over Huppert (I couldn't tell if she's a foot taller, but she really dwarfs her fellow actress, even when barefoot).

So the Madame – who namechecks McQueen and is basically a fashion model who married well, instead of a pompous, condescending aristocrat – is a hot young number (the video feeds having shown us every line on Huppert and Blanchett's faces) who spends most of her time onstage in her lingerie and nothing more. In other productions, the sexual tension has been provided solely by the two actresses playing the maids, but in Andrews and Upton's rerowking, the Madame is also sexually charged, confusing matters entirely and, again, removing the overtly political aspect of Genet's original entirely.

As I started out saying above, though, Huppert can do no wrong. At the end of the play, she is left alone onstage to do a final monologue in which she speaks directly to the audience and reflects on her position in life.

This final scene erases (nearly) the memories of all of Andrews and Upton's innovations and brings the play back down to earth, and to the playacting dimension that is central to the whole affair. No more childlike bouncing around, no more focus on fashion, no more distractions from the acting and the dialogue, just an actress incarnating a character who herself is used to playing a role in her daily life.

Blanchett does wonderful things with her role, and Huppert ultimately triumphs over all the silly innovations dreamed up by Andrews and Upton. It's a shame they're not in a better production of this classic play.