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Summit Conference
|
Indifference makes accomplices of us all, and we are responsible for other people's actions in a precise ratio to our power to prevent them from happening.
---Robert David MacDonald |
The Ladies, about the first four women, all legally married, is structured as a work in progress, with both the playwright, Anne Washburn, and the director, Anne Kauffman, inserted as characters. According to CurtainUp's Jenny Sandman, the play per se is still something of a good play in the making (Review).
Scottish playwright Robert David MacDonald's Summit Conference, which focuses on Hitler's and Mussolini's mistresses Eva Braun and Clara Petacci, is a more fully polished play. The current version, produced by the enterprising Sarah Megan Thomas who also plays Eva Braun, is actually a revival. It was written for the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow where it premiered in 1978 and later moved to the West End in London and starred Glenda Jackson.
Summit Conference's current home is small and the actors still unknown but Director Kit Thacker has given MacDonald's incisive script the tension and provocative nuances it demands. Aided by designer David Evans Morris she's even transformed the less than spacious space into a very reasonable facsimile of a wood-panelled drawing room of a German embassy circa 1941, luxuriously stocked with cigarettes and whisky Der Fuehrer publicly condemned, and with a prominently displayed model of a victory arch he has planned to commemorate his winning of the war.
With a young SS officer to serve tea (and make sure they do not stray from the room), Eva Braun and Clara Petacci have their own summit while the tyrants they each refer to as "my friend" confer about the War that is at a crucial stage. The women have never met and their get acquainted conversation is mostly about fashion and the Hollywood movies with which both are besotted.
The tea party has the china doll blonde Eva and the more robust, earthy Clara taking each other's measure most amusingly. But this campy invented summit of the mistresses has more on its mind than amusement. As the whisky and cigarettes Hitler frowns on for his Aryan masses are taken out of their hiding places, the banter turns into something much more insidious.
Eva's fidgety, nervousness reveals a personality that makes it easy to believe that she attempted suicide three times. Clara is more relaxed yet she too is aware of her powerlessness despite her liaison with a powerful man.
Most revealingly of all, the "friends" have not just taken over the women's lives but have so stuffed their minds so full of their power-mad, hate-filled beliefs, that before long they begin to sound like the men. Their heads still without a marcelled hair out of place, their feet firmly planted in Ferragamo shoes, the women metamorphose into puppets mouthing Der Fuehrer's and Il Duce's obscene credos.
The transition from gossipy ladies to Hitler-Mussolini stand-ins is more than lip service but moves the play to yet another and even more frightning level. Eva and Clara, having sealed their new friendship with a sexy kiss, focus their attentions on the guard who becomes a helpless toy in a vicious power game which searches for signs of Jewish origins even when protected by an SS uniform.
Of the three actors, Rita Pietropinto is the standout as the Italian backstage wife. In the scenes when the women become their lovers' mouthpieces, she evem takes on Mussolini's physical traits. She's also got some of the best and funniest lines ("We wanted men and we got institutions". . . "Il Duce would not declare war on America-- too many Italians. It would not be popular."). It takes Thomas somewhat longer to gain the required emotional altitude, but she does in the second act, especially in a horrendous monologue. Eric Altheide, who seems no more than a human prop at first, emerges as a significant player. He too has a strong monologue which is like a dagger aimed at everyone's conscience.
The soldier's "let them find their own answers," about whether it was evil for Germans of Jewish ancestry to espouse the Nazi cause, sums up the strength of this play: the fact that it touches on many moral issues, but forces the audience to ask and answer its own questions. Given the final turnaround scene, the humiliation of the soldier smacks of fantasy, as invented as this meeting. On the other hand the Nazi and Fascist reigns of terrors were the stuff we once thought could never really happen -- but they did.
The show's brief run has just been extended for a week, to March 6th. Rightly so. It's one of the more provocative and stimulating dramas to be found on or off Broadway.
| Summit Conference
Written by Robert David MacDonald Directed by Kit Thacker Cast: Sarah Megan Thomas, Eric Altheide, Rita Pietropinto, Set Design: David Evans Morris Costume Design: Deanna Berg Lighting Design: Juliet Chia Sound Design: Dennis Michael Keefe Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, includes one intermission Thirteenth Night Theatre Company at Urban Stages, 259 W. 30th St. SmartTix 212-868-4444 2/05/04 to 3/06/04; opening 2/07/04 -- extended a 2nd time to 3/13/04. Tue - Sat at 8pm Reviewed by Elyse Sommer based on 2/11/04 performance |
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Leonard Maltin's 2003 Movie and Video Guide
Ridiculous!The Theatrical Life & Times of Charles Ludlam
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The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Unforgettable Plays of the Last Century
6, 500 Comparative Phrases including 800 Shakespearean Metaphors by CurtainUp's editor.
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