"admirable and elevating" (but not easy)

July 8, 2004 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Audiences awaiting the opening of Eric Hill’s adaptation of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, now playing at the BTF Unicorn Theatre, are greeted by a sign that reads: Welcome to the Magic Theatre. Not for everyone.

When the lights come up on the play, the sign is gone, but we have been warned, and it must be admitted, regretfully, this is not an easy play, despite much in it that is admirable and elevating.

Director Hill’s training in the Japanese Suzuki method of acting leads to magical scenes such as the one in the second act when the ferryman takes Siddhartha across the river and the rest of the cast, circling about the two with thrusting horizontal poles, become the boat and the very waves of the river. The scene is as beautiful as it is symbolic.

And Hill’s willingness to take chances, to weave new theatrical patterns, is there in his attempt, only partially successful, of letting the play he has written tell two mirror-image stories: the story of Siddhartha and his journey to find life’s meaning(in which Hill stays tight on Hesse’s novella); and the story of the writer Hesse who was struggling to tell that story and so personally conflicted by his own angst that he could scarcely believe enough to tell it.

By the end of the play, both stories have been told and the message is one of acceptance and even hope. In bringing the West and 20th century angst into the plot of a much earlier Eastern religious tale, Hill brings theatre full circle in that all theatre — Eastern and Western — began with religious rites that gradually were secularized into theatre.

In order to understand what Hill is attempting, background is useful. Hesse’s short novel concerns a young Brahmin who leaves his home, against his father’s wishes, to go out into the world to seek the meaning of the individual life. His journey takes him to the Forest of self-denying monks, to Buddha himself, to a great city. He lives among the pious and the worldly, the devout and the profane, those who deny the pleasures of the world and those who embrace them. He experiences being rich, famous, married to a beautiful courtesan, fathering a son, and the pain of having the son reject him.

Eventually in simple hut beside a river, he listens to the ferryman and his journey is over. He understands that time is not real. Past, present and future are all NOW like the river, simultaneous and all perfect. "...listen to the water of the river...not just water...the voice of life...of Being...of perpetual Becoming..."

The other strand, the story of Hesse himself that Hill weaves into the Siddhartha story is personal angst of an author whose horror at his own world (the 1920’s and a world left fractured by the late war and his own personal grief over a divorce and an ill wife) make it impossible for him to finish the book on which he is laboring, Siddhartha.

Hesse is not only a character in the play, he is two characters and more. In the first act we see him as old Hesse in his wheelchair and on the opposite side of the stage as young, vibrant and eager to face the world in his search for life’s meaning. The aged Hesse, blocked in his attempt to write, is advised by Jung in Act I and by Freud in Act II. The two, and the advice they provide, as played, make for comic relief but provide no real help for Hesse - even though Hill’s play is described as "Jungian fantasy."

More important than the psychologists is the simple ferryman who, for most of the play, stands silently above the actions but in the end gives Hesse the answer he seeks.

This can be heavy stuff, if at times beautiful and Hill’s choices are wonderful when they work. He slyly unites the two themes. Young Hesse becomes Siddharta; this seems an obvious choice. But then, in an almost Shavian moment of surprise, old Hesse leaves his wheelchair to become the young Siddhartha.

The two plots mesh.

But it has been a long journey and although the audience applauded loudly, I fear many found the play over long and confusing.

Designers of scene, costume, lighting and sound (Yoshi Tanokura, Marija Djordjevic,Carleton Coffrin and Nathan Leigh) support Hill’s play admirably. The cast is strong and able. Outstanding were Andrew Michael Neiman and Michael McComiskey as the old and young Hesse, Isadora Wolfe as the courtesan, and Joe Jung as the ferryman.

Although the play has had tryouts at the University of Connecticut, this reviewer found it still a work-in-progress. At times is works beautifully, for instance, the weaving-in of T.S. Eliot and his own angst in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." At other times it was too wordy with other Hesse quotes that, despite the numerous narrators, slowed the action, especially in the first act which was less dynamic than the second.

Theatres like the BTF's Unicorn, proudly a home for emerging artists such as the talented young people in the cast, and willingly open to experiment with new theatrical concepts—which often work—are necessary. Audiences eager for only entertainment willl not flock to them, but they will attract small audiences who are interested in what they are trying to accomplish in new and different ways, not always successfully, but needed if theatre is to grow in its ability to present the angst of our contemporary world. This is not an easy play but at times it smashes though with a creative burst that is a joy. I am glad to have seen it, though must recommend it with reservations.