The situation in Witold Gombrowicz's play "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy," written in Poland in 1935, is simple yet challenging: in a small European kingdom of the sort that existed in mid-20th century films, the royal family (king, queen and princess ) admires the sunset, in full view of their subjects.
The prince, on his daily stroll, has suddenly come across a young woman. She is not pretty and does not present herself as a potential princess. Ugly, hard to size up and silent, she is accompanied by an aunt who apologizes for the strangeness of her niece.
The prince, tired of meaningless rounds of courtship, is challenged by the fact that the girl, whose name is Yvonne, radiates nothing in his presence; she is the very embodiment of passivity. It appears that anything may be done with her, and he decides to marry her. Where is it written that the prince must marry a beauty?
What begins as a game and a whim takes on monstrous proportions: Yvonne, in as much as she exists at all, wants nothing, says nothing, plans nothing, and so makes everyone uncomfortable. No one knows how to approach her. After all, there can be no creature which supplies not even a hint of its own significance and its relationship to us.
Alone with ourselves, facing the impermeable figure, who exceeds the bounds of acceptability, who is all background, arouses anxiety that turns into violence. The play, which begins with a monstrous joke, ends in monstrousness which is no joke at all. The royal court, entirely based on forms and a perfectly clear framework, defends itself against something that doesn't belong, and whose very existence seeks to subvert.
What is especially fascinating is that, like Yvonne, whose meaningless existence breaks up the royal court she has entered unwillingly, this is how Gombrowicz's play - one of the greatest, most original and neglected (mostly by British and American culture; not the Europeans, including the Poles ) - works on the audience. It does not explain, is not for something or against something else.
It tells a story into which the participants and the audience must pour content and meaning. It is not about any particular reality, whether in Poland of the '30s or the Israel of today. It is about human relationships.
Theater as artIt appears that Gombrowicz, who left Poland in August, 1939, lived for 20 years in Argentina and died in France in July, 1969 (without ever returning to Poland, where his books were banned except for a short period in 1958 ), was not disturbed by the fact that the audience felt confounded by his play.
He is quoted in the Gesher Theater's playbill: "These works are not understood by many simply because they were not written for them. But where does this demand - that I must write for everyone - come from? Why do you complicate what is a very simple process: 1. I sit at my writing desk and write for myself, at my level, for my own pleasure, and perhaps also for a handful of people close to me in their character and culture. 2. The publisher publishes it, because he thinks it will interest certain readers. 3. The rest are not required to buy or read it."
It would be correct for every theater manager and theater writer in Israel to read, think about and adopt this statement, as much as they can. From this point of view, the mounting of this play by the Gesher Theatre is an important act, because in and of itself it is a reminder that a work of art - and theater is a work of art, not merely entertainment intended to bring an audience to the hall - exists to challenge those who watch it, who must cope with it.
It does not have to enchant or find favor with everyone. It exists; it doesn't demand, explain or apologize. It makes no promises, and certainly not of enjoyment. At its best, it gives us a better understanding of ourselves. Gombrowicz is one of the first to expose the monstrousness of interpersonal relations.
What is especially fascinating about Gombrowicz is the fact that several dozen years after he wrote his novels, stories, plays and diaries, their subjects became part of the intellectual discourse about the human soul, and interpersonal and social relationships.
Before we all began to speak about subjects and objects, about reification, appropriation, approaches to others, and how the existence of others forces us to deal with ourselves, Gombrowicz wrote about all this. You see what happens in this play and suddenly understand that these are also the subjects of Hanoch Levin, especially his early works.
"Man is controlled by what is created 'between' people, and has no other god, except that stemming from people," Gombrowicz wrote in the forward to his second play, "The Wedding." He wrote this in 1937, before we learned what people are capable of doing to others because they attribute certain qualities to them: and how people to whom these qualities are attributed respond to this approach.
Aside from making this choice, exceptional in Israeli theater repertoire, and even that of Gesher, the theater deserves praise because it is the only one in Israel to care about the "look" the performance will have, i.e. design (and not only to the story it tells ).
This is inspired by the company's artistic leader, theater director Yevgeny Arye, but also comes from the fact that the theater has an in-house designer, Michael Kremenko (and his predecessor, Sasha Lisiansky, was also a great artist. )
Kremenko's stage is not realistic, nor is it merely functional; it is everywhere and nowhere, and mainly a stage, an aesthetic entity. What takes place occurs on four "ramps" that lead down to center stage, creating a sort of lion's den, and where a round platform lies. At any time it can be connected to four ropes, whisked up and turn into a seesaw, a table, a sort of elevator, or a stage for a circus or freak show. It can be flat, perpendicular, slanted: a game or a threat.
Avi Yonah Bueno's lighting and music by Avi Benjamin are presences in themselves and an important part of the theater craft.
A marionetteActor Moshe Ivgy's directorial debut in a theatrical work of this magnitude is surprisingly good. He exhibits a sure hand in guiding the actors and the story, certainly in the first part of the play. The casting of Dana Ivgy as Yvonne was a wise decision, especially as there is something unusual about her appearance.
Ivgy directed her correctly and she is slack, answering with careless indifference, bordering on insult, but without crossing over. This character has only one word to say in the entire play - "yes" - and Dana manages to load it with all the contempt that the prince attributes to her, and with all the mystery about at whom it is aimed.
If I have any particular complaint here, it is that the director does not trust the situation, and gives Yvonne all kinds of stage business, during which she becomes a sort of marionette for those who operate her, adorning herself with clownish make-up in hesitant movements, as if she is aware of the role she has been given by those who in fact are trying to defend themselves from her.
Gesher actors, who today, and especially in this play, are completely Israeli, fill their roles well within this framework. The best concentrate on an exact performance of almost stereotypical behavior, while adhering strictly to the forms of behavior, with an almost ritualistic, meticulous approach to details.
Excellent are Alexander Senderovich as Cyprian, the representative of the kingdom's subjects, who can save the court from its crisis, although he too is in thrall to Yvonne's pathetic and puzzling existence; and Efrat Ben Zur, in the role of the queen, shamed by Yvonne's silence over the fact that she writes in secret grotesquely sensual poetry; and to some extent, Daniel Chernish as Cyril, the prince's companion.
Miki Lyon as the king and Alon Friedman as the prince play two childish men properly and with their own natural energy, but paradoxically, they reveal a weakness in Israeli actors, in contrast with the strengths Russian actors bring to the stage. Their acting lacks a degree of artificiality, awareness of the dimension of form, into which an actor pours his personality.
The fact is that this play on stage, in which appearances crumble in the presence of Yvonne, whose own appearance does not disturb her, the characters are more than human, and the actors must be more than their personalities to a large extent.
Moshe Ivgy writes in the playbill that in directing this play he thought "about our society (not only in Israel ), about governmental corruption and the emptiness overtaking everything." This is certainly true. But it is not the main thing.
This play is what it is: a story about people who have no idea how to relate to one person, because she does not communicate anything. They are forced to produce an approach to chaos from within themselves, where they discover only destructiveness, violence and hostility.
What is so fine about putting on this play is not the fact that it is significant or important to our society, but rather that it is possible to put it on just as it should be, without explaining or apologizing, and then to expect that the audience will have to deal with what it manages to create on the stage.
I hear from Gesher Theatre manager Lena Kreindlin, sadly but unsurprisingly, that the play is a hard sell. I understand the difficulty: This play does not deal with relevant current events, does not have a message or a lesson that can be verbalized.
The story is surprising, provides no consolation, and does not have a soothing happy end. It is everything the Israeli audience is not used to seeing. But this is its uniqueness. It is not perfect, but it is different. It was not made to make life easier and pleasanter for the audience. It was not made to be understood by the majority. But many people can take not a little from it, if they are prepared to open themselves up a little, without being told how worthwhile it is, or that it promises enjoyment.
