SPOLETO BUZZ BLOG

There was a moment during the festival’s second weekend when one might have plausibly suggested the most buzzworthy aspect of Spoleto Festival USA 2005 so far seemed to be the weather. After all, you can count the cloudless, non-drenched days since the festival’s May 27 kickoff on one finger, although it’s likely to be a wet finger. But somewhere along the way – Monday afternoon’s fourth and final Conversations With program featuring Mabou Mines DollHouse director Lee Breuer might be a good place to put it – the 29th Spoleto Festival’s legacy became a product of Breuer’s self-perpetuating controversy machine. The director of Spoleto’s centerpiece theatre event and all-round touchstone of contention has injected at least as much drama into this year’s festival as he’s placed on the Dock Street Theatre stage. The buzz surrounding the play itself and its unconventional casting and staging choices, the myriad alterations it’s undergone since it opened on May 26 (with fellatio scene and without, plus or minus 45 minutes and a second intermission, naked lead actress vs. non-naked lead actress, all depending on the night you were there) and the polarized critical and audience reactions to it are enough to make one long for the genteel civility of the last presidential election.

When DollHouse opened, City Paper theatre critic Jennifer Corley gave Breuer’s avant-garde adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play A Dolls House the very highest of marks, and Post and Courier arts reporter Dottie Ashley raved about it. P&C Spoletoblogger Daniel Conover (who, by his own admission, is not a professional theatre critic – he just plays one on the web) called it “brilliant,” and even I had great things to say about the play. True, audience reactions to Breuer’s play have been all over the map (concentrating mostly at either end), but critical reception to the production, in Charleston anyway, has been overwhelmingly positive – with the single exception of last Thursday’s column from Post and Courier overview critic Blair Tindall, in which she savaged it, writing “…to me, Breuer’s treatment seemed one of those fabulous 3 a.m. concepts that look absurd in the morning. It’s a great idea. And I didn’t think it worked at all, an opinion seconded by the several audience members leaving at intermission.” There was much more, but essentially Tindall walked a critical line that managed to eviscerate, insult, and dismiss at once.

At Monday’s Conversations With program in Recital Hall, Breuer, who was joined by cast members Maude Mitchell, Mark Povinelli, and Ricardo Gil, greeted host Martha Teichner politely but clearly prepared to unload a bellyful of vitriol. And unload he did, in a mostly intelligent manner but with the wrath of a director spurned urging him on. The lion’s share of his fury was aimed directly at Ms. Tindall, whom he variously called ignorant, unqualified, “matronizing,” a “fake critic,” and clearly unversed in the history of avant-garde theatre. Breuer’s beef seemed to be mainly in the fact that, as a non-profit theatre, Mabou Mines is dependent on philanthropic funding from the kind of people to whom a review from me or Dan or Dottie or Jennifer is utterly meaningless – but Tindall’s column could well sink his ship. “We’re in a precarious situation,” he said. “Bad press like hers is national. Bad reviews of productions at major arts festivals can cut off your funding … My anger is directed at the fakery of [Tindall’s] politics and her feminism. She has a lot of power. And her points of view have become reactionary. And so she’s basically … the enemy.”

Breuer’s cast was wholeheartedly behind him. Ricardo Gil (Dr. Rank) took offence at Tindall’s suggestion that his director’s decision to cast the show based on size was a “circus-show steroetype.”

“For Blair to make judgments about us being oppressed without being informed is poor journalism,” he said to applause.

Povinelli (Torvald Helmer) agreed: “I’m being offered a role that’s one of the finest in the theatrical lexicon.”

Meanwhile, Maude Mitchell (Nora Helmer) wasn’t above suggesting, as tactfully as she could, that much of the negative audience reaction stems from a distinctly Southern (read “regressive”) sociocultural mindset: “This is a highly stylized piece of theatre. And – how can I say this? – we’re in a part of the country where the culture itself is highly stylized. I’ve been to a couple of luncheons where, at 11:30 am, I’m looking around and seeing women wearing my character’s makeup.”

Breuer’s either genuinely angry, slightly paranoid (which host Teichner suggested at least once), or a superb, unparalleled master of promotional agitprop – and having met the man and spoken with him alone and at length, I’m personally inclined to believe the latter. Does anyone reading this really think ticket sales to DollHouse are going to go down in light of the controversy and his comments earlier this week? Say what you want about Breuer, but don’t call him dumb.