Beowulf, A Thousand Years of Baggage. Book & lyrics by Jason Craig; music by Dave Malloy; directed by Curt Columbus. Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI. September 8 - October 9, 2016.
Reviewed by Kevin J. Harty (harty@lasalle.edu)
Medievalism and a fascinating
example of Brecht’s epic theatre are on full display at Providence’s Trinity
Rep. Originally presented in 2008 by Berkeley’s Shogun Players, Beowulf, A Thousand Years of Baggage
stages the Anglo-Saxon poem as a rock opera that opens with three academics,
armed with transparencies and an overhead projector no less, seated at a table
about to deliver their conference papers on Beowulf—think
of the worst possible sessions at the annual medieval congresses in Leeds or in
Kalamazoo. At stake in the academic babble are weighty matters such as the
proper pronunciation of Geat and Heorot, and whether the underwater lair
of Grendel’s Mother is a feminist response to the oppressive patriarchy of the
male/hero-centered world of the poem. But,
before we can doze off—again think of Leeds or of Kalamazoo—one of the
panelists is transformed into Grendel in all his fury as he rips the head off
of one of Hrothgar’s thanes—substituted for by what appears to be a Ken or GI
Joe doll. Eventually the other two panelists
will be transformed into the poem’s other two monsters—Grendel’s Mother and the
dragon from Beowulf’s fatal final battle.
For the production, the folks
at Trinity have basically cleared out their main theatre space and filled it
with scaffolding, risers and planks, leaving behind odd bits of stage props
perhaps from other production, perhaps not—a ship’s wheel, a cannon, a clown’s
head, a table from an Italian restaurant—later used by Grendel when he dines on
bread stick bones and pasta with thane-meat sauce Bolognese.
Costumes are a pastiche from a
grab bag of styles. Hrothgar wears a silver lamé evening jacket. Beowulf—who is
more brawn than brains (or, as we academic might have it, he is a bit heavier
on fortitudo than on sapientia)—sports a pleather kilt and
black football shoulder pads, to which at first an American flag is
attached. In his battle with the dragon
at the end of the play, he will don a winged helmet and a maroon cloak. The academics are appropriately dowdy in
their attire when they play academics, but easily transformed into marvelous
giant puppets thanks to the addition of all kinds of props. Grendel’s Mother—at first a frumpy feminist
academic of a certain age and type—is further transformed into her monstrous
shape with the aid of turquoise swimming flippers and a matching snorkeling mask.
The musicians too sport a variety of outfits including deer heads and antlers,
and their music reflects a mix of styles from Klezmer to heavy rock to country
to the balladic. As I indicated early, the production is nothing if not
Brechtian.
The production also takes aim
at contemporary issues. Hrothgar is cast against type—the actor playing him is
young and African American—and four of his five thanes are gender-bending
shield maidens. Grendel and his Mother
are clearly foreigners—terrorists even—of which to be wary. The heroic idea that it is better to get
vengeance than to mourn has some uncomfortable echoes today. Hrothgar and his
court make the mistake of letting their guard down after Grendel is dispatched.
Nonetheless, act one ends on a high note, though a banner drops from the
ceiling to proclaim “Mission Accomplished”—pace
George W. Bush’s 2003 speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Both Grendel and Beowulf, we are told, are
mentally challenged—Beowulf admits to being dyslexic. Grendel’s Mother even lectures Beowulf about
his attack on Grendel as if the eponymous hero were a playground bully.
The acting and singing are
uniformly excellent. The humor is
genuine—the battle between Grendel’s Mother and Beowulf is staged using an
overhead projector and transparencies in a style that echoes Javanese shadow
puppetry (another nod to epic theatre)—and includes an excursus on the magic of
some swords including Excalibur (another nod to—against?—the academy, in this
case with a dig at the scholarly obsession to compare and contrast almost
anything—when we were in graduate school, my classmates and I thought about
founding a journal called Non-influence
Studies).
The lobby bar had Grendel’s
Grog and Battle Axe Malbec on offer, and the house staff distributed free cups
of Grendel’s blood—cranberry juice—during the interval. One could have wished
for some mead, and definitely for some tee shirts. At the end of the interval, audience members
got to play volley ball with the cast using a balloon that was supposedly
Grendel’s head. The highlight of the production was the singing in Old English
of the passage in the poem describing the battle between the agéd Beowulf and
the dragon—the song was truly moving.
Part of the premise of the
production is that Beowulf is a
boring fossil that generations of high school and college students have been
forced to study. But the production itself belies that premise as it demonstrates
that the poem is far from boring or fossilized.
It continues to speak to us—I had just finished discussing Beowulf with a class of first-years and
the members of my senior seminar before attending the Trinity production. Certainly both groups of students found much
to admire and to discuss in the poem.
Beowulf, which continues to
have an amazing afterlife, more properly has a continuing legacy, not a
thousand years of baggage—despite the efforts of some academics at
conferences. That legacy includes any
number of novels, multiple graphic novels (a least one, Kid Beowulf, an eight-part series), other musical works, several
operas, a spate of recent films, an on-going television series on the Esquire
Channel (that is admittedly a hybrid of a Western and Game of Thrones), individual episodes and story arcs in several unrelated
television series (Xena: Warrior Princess
and Star Trek: Voyager), board and
video games, and comics.
In 2010, Trinity staged a
wonderful production of Camelot set
in a London Underground station during the Blitz. Trinity’s production of Beowulf is, likewise, an example of
stage medievalism at its best—but I really do wish that there had been tee
shirts for sale with the wonderful poster—see above—for the production on them—life
may in part be a series of missed marketing opportunities!
Beowulf, A
Thousand Years of Baggage, book and lyrics by Jason Craig, music by Dave Malloy,
direction by Curt Columbus, musical direction by Michael Rice, choreography by
Jude Sandy, set by Michael McGarty, costumes by Olivera Gajic, lighting by Dan
Scully, sound by Peter Sasha Hurowitz, puppets by Soshanna Utchenik, production
stage managed by Kelly Hardy. With
Charlie Thurston (Beowulf), Stephen Berenson (Academic One/Grendel), Anne
Scurria (Academic Two/Grendel’s Mother), Janice Duclos (Academic Three/Dragon),
Joe Wilson, Jr. (Hrothgar), Rachel
Warren (Warrior One), Rebecca Gibel (Warrior Two), Rachel Clausen (Warrior
Three), Laura Lyman Payne (Warrior Four), and Brad Wilson (Warrior Five), also with
Michael Rice on keyboard, Karen Orsi on guitar, and Mike Sartini on percussion. A production of Trinity Repertory Company,
the State Theatre of Rhode Island, at the Lederer Theater Center in Providence;
Curt Columbus, Artistic Director, and Tom Parrish, Executive Director.
Kevin J. Hary
La Salle University
