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33 Variations: A Race with Beethoven Against Time

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Director and playwright Moises Kaufman, of The Laramie Project fame, came on stage at the beginning of 33 Variations, his latest show now in previews on Broadway, last Thursday to explain that he had added some last minute changes. Surprisingly so, since, although the play is new to New York, it has come third-hand via Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. The third time around for Kaufman, his direction and scenery haven’t changed, and despite his warning, and a few line flubs, it was a polished and elegant production of an engaging play.

There seems to be little to fool with, as this well-constructed play tells a fascinating set of stories. Musicologist and ALS patient Katherine Brandt (Jane Fonda) determinedly studies Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations to figure out why he would write so many variations on a mediocre waltz. Meanwhile, her daughter Clara (Samantha Mathis) tries to get close to her emotionally distant mother, who has less than a year to live, while Clara is also falling in love with a young nurse in the light romantic comedy subplot of this tightly-woven play.

We also watch Beethoven himself (Zach Grenier) work under an obsessive impulse to finish the variations while going deaf and becoming ill. Katherine, Clara, and Beethoven are all in a race against time, and as Katherine comes to feel, Beethoven’s 33 variations are a way of exploring all the possibilities and complexities existing in one moment in time.

Death is always the end, but in this case it does not denude the play of drama. The crux of the story becomes the conflict between mother and daughter, and Katherine’s need to finish her work. The interludes where Beethoven rages or Clara’s boyfriend tries to romance her are the delight of the play, lightening the sense of pathos that is always present yet which, I suspect, never fully plays out. On one hand we are saved from melodrama, and Kaufman’s language is delightfully restrained and natural. However, despite the competent acting of the players, some of the characters (the music publisher and the German librarian for example) stray into caricature, and Katherine would be more emotionally compelling if she broke down once.

The production of this piece is the well-honed result of its many stagings. The set was wonderfully handled to accommodate the switch between eras, and its versatile sparseness was modern, light, and effective, with sliding panes of music notes surrounded by shelves alternately accommodating 21st century Bonn and 18th century Vienna. A pianist accompanies the play with parts of the variations. Just as characters talk through time, the music and the characters interact as well. In addition to the drama of the piece, I enjoyed learning about Beethoven’s life and works, but also how to listen to him.

33 Variations boasts something for everyone. With its meditation on death, its historical and musical aspects, its touches of light romance, and the gorgeous intermingling of people and ideas across time, the play begs a full house. Combined with the fame of Moises Kaufman and Jane Fonda, it will be interesting to see if that is enough to reel in an audience during these hard economic times.

33 Variations continues at the Eugene O’Neil theater through May 24.

Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine on February 21.

Curious Cases

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” ‘He seems to grow younger every year,’ they would remark. And if old Roger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at first to give a proper welcome to his son he atoned at last by bestowing on him what amounted to adulation.

And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be well to pass over as quickly as possible. There was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to attract him. At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-coloured hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery-moreover, and, most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it been she who had “dragged” Benjamin to dances and dinners–now conditions were reversed.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald is, as a rule, charming, and the short story from which this excerpt is taken is only a slight exception. There’s something intriguing and yet tedious about following a character whose life runs backward both in story and new movie. Perhaps it’s because of the inevitability of the premise?

The movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based off of Fitzgerald’s 1921 short story that follows Benjamin through his life from birth as an old man as he lives, falls in love, and dies as a child. The movie differs in mostly every other respect. The acting of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett is, of course, accomplshed, and the aging process is a testament to the marvels of technological advancement. It was well made, but nearly 3 hours with no plot development is slow going.The short story is worthwhile; it’s up to you to decide if the movie is worth 3 hours of your time. An hour and a half, certainly. For 3 hours, I require action.

It’s a great premise for a story, and a great fantasy to play in your head, but it doesn’t make for intriguing cinema. What is the crux of the plot? Benjamin grows young. And what happens? Benjamin grows young. There is no great struggle, just the unnatural process of unaging.

Both short story and movie are curious cases in themselves. A great premise for both, and on one hand a great writer, and the other excellent actors. Yet they fall short, at least in my estimation. We will see if the film becomes curiously popular. Stranger things have happened.

Bel Canto: Unlikely Situation Sings

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To my own surprise, I have finished a good contemporary novel. I suspected it might be one, but then I was warned it got slow in the middle. I reserved judgement until I shut the covers last night. Bel Canto is an engaging and graceful read by award-winner Ann Patchett.

It concerns a birthday party featuring an opera singer held in a poor South American country, in hopes of luring the guest of honor, a Japanese business tycoon, into building factories there. As she sings, the room is invaded by terrorists who take the group hostage. The substance of the book lies between this action-packed beginning and it’s similar, and inevitable, end. The group of prisoners and captors forget more and more of the outside world, as the weeks go by inside their new home. Relationships form, eventually between the captors and their prisoners as well. And then people begin falling in love!But, as they all forgot inside the house they share, the situation is a ticking bomb.

An interesting premise and a well-done story, Patchett excels at creating depth in a wealth of characters. So there we have it, a good book. It’s treatment of opera (bel canto means beautiful song), and how it moves this diverse group of people is lovely. Opera in many ways dominates the characters lives, as the singer begins to practise every morning. Conterposed to child terrorists in fatigues it seems improbable, as if both could not exist in the same world.

I am still sticking to my resolve, however. Only classics from now on. Dickens and Proust. There’s not enough time to read everything. If only I could have a separate self of me, just for reading. But first some Baudelaire and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.