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The Illusion
Tony Kushner's adaptation of Pierre Corneille's 1636 comedy
directed by Robin Chaplik.
Preview Thursday, June 1, 8 PM. $10.
Opens Friday, June 2, 8 PM. $50.
Through July 9: Fridays, 8 PM; Saturdays, 6 and 9 PM; Sundays, 3 PM. $20.
Piven Theatre Workshop
Noyes Cultural Arts Center
927 Noyes, Evanston
847-866-8049.
A cave, a magician, a father’s search, three visions of love, a reunion: these are the predominant images of THE ILLUSION, Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s 17th century L'Illusion Comique [Theatrical Illusion], which is being staged by Piven Theatre Workshop in the studio at Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston.
In musing about the present state of the theatre and dramatic art, the playwright has stated that "A world of audiences hungry for the Difficult is the sort of world I want." THE ILLUSION exemplifies Kushner's concept of "the art of the difficult." Piven’s excellent production creates an audience "hungry for the Difficult." (Tony Kushner, "The Art of the Difficult. An Essay," Civilization Magazine, October/November 1997, vol. 4, no. 4).
The plot of THE ILLUSION involves the search of lawyer Pridamant of Avignon for his son, whom he banished 15 years before. The father consults the magician Alcandre, who lives in a cave with his deaf and dumb servant. Pridamant asks for a vision of his son; Alcandre conjures up three. The father sees his son enmeshed in three different love affairs, always with the same two women - a lady and her maidservant; always with the same sinister rival and the same lovesick rival. The world views in the three visions become progressively darker. "Mysteriously," the names of the two women and the three men and the settings change with each vision. The son is never called by his "real" name.
In the first vision, which is totally Kushner's invention, the son is a penniless young and altruistic swain smitten by love of a lady he worships from afar; he enlists her maid to help him "plight his troth." In the second, the son is a manservant of his nobleman rival who is secretly courting the lady because of her wealth, while bedding the maid. He is imprisoned for killing the nobleman rival in a duel. The maid arranges his escape and his union with her lady at the cost of the lady's entire fortune; the lady's faith in her lover allows her to give all to receive all. The son escapes with the now penniless lady. In the third vision, the son is a philanderer married to the lady. He is assassinated by the prince because of his affair with the princess. The lady witnesses the stabbing, is overcome, and dies. When Pridamant sees his son mortally wounded he becomes so disconsolate that he falls ill. The magician then reveals that the visions are theatrical illusions, "scenes from a theatrical repertoire:" the son is an actor. Father and son will be united and reconciled, although the father questions his son's choice of career and cannot remember his "real" name.
THE ILLUSION is Kushner's free adaptation of Pierre Corneille's play, L’Illusion Comique [Theatrical Illusion]. The French comedy's appeal to Kushner is not difficult to understand. Kushner believes that "playwriting... is dialogic and dialectic, and is fundamentally always more about an argument than it is about narrative progression." (Christopher Hawthorne, "Salon Interview: Tony Kushner," Salon Magazine, June 16, 1996). L’Illusion Comique [Theatrical Illusion], which was written in 1635-6, presents the archetypal comic plot in which the old and moribund world order of the father is transformed into the richer and more complex reality of the son. Unlike the tragic quest for order, certainty, and a moral center, the comic father eschews his ordered world of law and money and honor to seek his son in un-ordered, even otherworldly places. Only when the father rejects the mandates of society, law and justice does he reunite with his son—who is presented in the visions as being unfettered by these concepts. The father's love for his son with all his foibles is experienced through the visions. "The art of illusion," one of Kushner's characters quips, "is the art of love, and the art of love is the blood-red heart of the world." The comic plot sets up a dialectic that results in the final union of father and son, fantasy and reality, love and betrayal, personal and societal morality.
In the "Director's Notes" for THE ILLUSION, Robin Chaplik suggests that Corneille's play was a response "to the Catholic Church's increasingly critical view of the theatre by questioning the complex relationships between illusion, reality and religious Faith." She believes that Corneille's play "was first and foremost a defense of the Theater." I think Corneille's intention is clearly demonstrated by his use of the magician's cave. "Corneille's use of a cave as Alcandre's place of enchantment draws on a European tradition in which caves were regarded as mystical entities-metaphors for the cosmos-places where magic and a sense of the divine dwelled. During the Baroque period, in which Corneille was writing, caves had become a popular theatrical setting where the triumph of art over nature was demonstrated. . . . . This Baroque ideal is reflected in Alcandre's ability to create illusion as splendor and refinement within the rough and primitive environment of the cave." (David Esbjornson, Director's Note, The Classic Stage Company (New York).) So, even the basic setting of the play presents a dialectical argument: like the cave, can theatre create illusions that are truths; can fantasy be reality; can reality be illusory?
Kushner asserts that "Difficult Art needs to be assembled in collaboration with the spectator; it doesn't come prepackaged by the artist." He explains that the "action that can be demanded of a spectator in the theater is the action demanded of the dreamer by a dream, or by Jesus in the parables or by the Passover Haggadah, which does such a peculiarly meandering, fragmentary job of telling what is after all a simple story. The action required by each of these is thinking, piecing together, searching, interpreting, understanding." (Kushner, "The Art of the Difficult"). I believe that such a collaboration is only possible if the elements of the performance are "rich" enough to engender in the audience a desire to make sense of it. Piven's production achieves this objective. Each element of the production: the setting, the blocking, the cast, the costumes, the sound, and the lighting is evocative and suffused with meaning.
The setting and blocking physically engage the audience in the performance. The magician's cave extends into the audience beyond the thrust stage. Alcandre even sits in the audience during one of the visions. Illusion and reality merge when the onstage audience, the father in search of his wayward son, witnesses the visions or scenarios in the same way and at the same moment as the "offstage" audience does. The actors enter, exit, duel in the space beyond the stage, with the center platform with its black and red magical pentagram. Many speeches are given on a stump/platform that is physically off the stage, inches from the audience. When each of the visions are first seen in tableau the scrim is so non-diaphanous that the audience must strain to see, thereby blocking any verisimilitude of these scenes. The entire theatrical experience is presentational. As the blocking unites the audience to the action, it also mirrors the progressive darkening of the visions of love - from the possibility of union to separation. "The staging seeks to delineate the growing rifts between the characters, a dance that externalizes the developing tensions." (Chaplik, "Director's Notes"). To the spectator, this staging is apparent, and allusive - one must work to make sense of it. The sound is at once familiar and mysterious. As the visions of love darken, the "melody turns to discord." (Chaplik, "Director's Notes"). Even though the setting is a cave, all is not darkness. The most interesting staging devise is the use of color—in the costumes and the lighting—from springtime pastels to more primary colors to dark tones and shadows.
The eight member cast - two women and six men - are uniformly up to the challenge of this difficult piece of art. Because "the characters in each new vision are alternate versions of their previous incarnations" (Chaplik, "Director's Notes"), the actors are able to develop their essentially stock comic characters in many directions, but always retain their essence. The ensemble moves quite ably from pratfalls, grandiose gestures, and comic excesses to more serious meditations about the nature of love and illusion.
Kushner believes that the best theater is hard on audiences, rewarding us by making us rise to its challenge. Experiencing Piven's production of THE ILLUSION was challenging. But, I will give it one of Kushner's own accolades: I "loved the strain of watching it."
--Sandra Marie Lee
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