| Swan White the Gate Theater Shortly before he died, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote, 'If man had been able to roll, he would not have needed to invent the wheel. In the same way he has invented Surrealism.' It's a matter for the anthropologists what humankind did before the invention of the wheel, but the Gate are currently giving us the chance to see what we had to make do with before Surrealism by staging this quasi-oneiric, symbolist, Nineteenth Century tosh. Strindberg's play concerning the travails of the eponymous heroine, daughter and step-daughter respectively of a Duke and Duchess (known only as the Duke and Duchess) takes place in an imaginary landscape composed of archetypes (in this context, a euphemism for clich�s). Like all step-mothers, the Duchess is wicked and most of the play is about her attempts to prevent Swan White from marrying her true love, The Young Prince. When Swan White finally prevails, it's thanks in a large measure to such improving stuff as fortitude, constancy and chastity, though not, unfortunately, to much cleverness. |
| As an adult fairy tale this is a lot less satisfactory than the children's variety in that it makes even less sense and is far more overburdened with florid, uninspired poetry. Worse, the usual Grimm Brother's denouement of grisly revenge is here replaced by the more mature and less theatrically engrossing one of reconciliation. We're even asked to understand that the Duchess is only a bad egg because she got a rocky start in life, never had enough love etc. On top of that, there's a two-bit philosophising streak that, for instance, has earth literally clawing at the lover's heals as they attempt to retreat to the land of dreams. I was ready to depart for nod myself throughout a lot of this, kept awake only by the conundrum of what motivated this production. Laughs? There's certainly a lot of ironic snickering potential here. The maudlin setting - low lighting and moist peat - suggested otherwise, but there were enough knowing, Disneyesque touches to indicate that Director Timothy Walker was enjoying a quiet (very quiet) joke of some sort. Still, far more baffling than entertaining. Did I miss something? |