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Thursday, September 8, 2016

In Context: Phaedra(s)


Isabelle Huppert is the incestuous queen Phaedra in this carnal triptych combining multiple versions of the salacious Greek legend, coming to the 2016 BAM Next Wave Festival Sep 13—18. Context is everything, so get even closer to the show with this curated selection of related articles, sounds and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #Phaedras.

Related Programs

Talk
Isabelle Huppert
Sat, Sep 17 at 5pm
Huppert speaks with philosopher Simon Critchley about the tragic and controversial heroine.

Talk
Phaedra Interpreted
Sun, Sep 18 at 11am
A panel of scholars and artists examine how the myth of Phaedra has been reinterpreted to reflect contemporary society—and the timeless truths it continues to reveal.

Read

Article

What did you think? Tell us what's on your mind in the comments below and by posting on social media using #Phaedras.

29 comments:

  1. Very ugly piece of theatre. At times brutal. When it wasn't, it veered from over indulgent to convoluted, and then often decided to settle on just plain silly. What was the message? That uncontrolled lust and passion in mortals, who mirror the behavior of the gods themselves, leads to destruction? Wow. To demonstrate that rather simple concept needed 3 1/2 hours of perversity and prurience and unbridled exhibitionism? If there wasn't a major movie star on stage, would the BAM audience have given, once again, its predictable and obligatory standing ovation? Undoubtedly. Awe is cheap.

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    1. As much as I would have loved to see Huppert on stage, and as familiar as I am with the story and its various adaptations, the NY Times review of this particular adaptation was so bad, and so believable (I’m familiar with Eurotrash), that we chose not to attend the performance even thought we had tickets. We have just moved and didn’t need that kind of “entertainment” just now.

      I understand and appreciate BAM’s desire to be edgy and support the avant garde, but this is something else altogether. From most of the comments of those who attended which are in the same vein as the NY Times review, this is revolution for the sake of revolution, not to reimagine a work to refresh it and make its meaning clearer to a contemporary audience.

      I just moved here and plan on coming to BAM regularly. I hope this play is not the norm.

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    2. I agree with the author of this comment. Plus, poor staging and poor acting on Phaedra's part. Shameful!

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  2. A great and true review very well written!!

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  3. I loved Huppert -- She is beautiful, has a commanding voice, looks spectacular on stage, and I was indeed thrilled to see her on stage after knowing many of her films... She actually played a character I've seen in many of her films, sexually hungry, driven somewhat innocently by passion, falling deeper into despair or self=destruction-- even hung in the end, as in Story of Women-- (or was she guillotined?)... As an antidote, see Eight Women But the play itself had problems. My friend and I thought the 2nd death/suicide -- apparently the intermission -- was the end; we were surprised at such thin applause, and we left... That seemed enough, and the soap opera quality of the sexual triangle (or quadruple) with its tedious dialogue -- intensified after Huppert went to the wings-- went beyond the requirements of tragedy...All that could have gone on with Hippolyte's room never "mended" (re the technical problem)... Also, we couldn't figure out the role of the totally traditional sexual sexualized woman dancer at the play's opening -- was Phaedra trapped in a male-dominated framework of eroticism...?
    My comments may not be fully fair, since I didn't see the last act. and I do admire Huppert,

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  4. I absolutely do not like the play. I prefer beauty of life, not slops. I do not accept that art needs to be brutal, ugly, perverse and to leave in you a nasty feeling. Probably that was the purpose of he director and he fully achieved it, but if I do not leave the theather enlightened and happy then I feel I lost my time, even worst it could be a bad influence, a wrong model for our lives. The last part was so away from the good taste and the normal human values, that I was happy that not understanding French, and not reading the subtitles I avoided this torture. I should admire that Isabele Hupert and the actors ware great.

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  5. Three views of an ancient human conflict. Bells, whistles and erotica notwithstandiing, a very French sensibility applied to a simple storyline. Lots of us in the audience got it. The final dance in silver was beyond thrilling, and Huppert was magnificent.

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    1. Notwithstanding? What a convenient preposition to use to insure you would NOT leave the theatre unsatisfied. One could just as well have said "Notwithstanding its gratuitousness, its vulgarity, its pandering, its puerile, tawdry Eurotrash ethos, it was a magnificent production. To be "beyond thrilled" by that dance's insulting and stomach churning example of female sexual exploitation and objectification says much about those in the audience who "got it". For those who didn't, the philosophers will convene on Saturday to explain it all.

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  6. This was a clever modern take on the myth, but it came off as grating rather than edgy. The problem I am having is pin-pointing exactly what it was that made it feel that way, because overall it was an interesting evening of theater and I am glad I attended. It was not the acting, which was excellent. It might have been the difficulty following the story line, although the program notes did explain the "three Phaedras" plot idea. It was not the rapid-fire French with surtitles. (I loved that it was in French, which was one of my majors, although it didn't help me me much when the passionate speech was spat out like rounds of bullets!) The staging was often clever — especially the room within a room that contained the most searing of the scenes between Phaedra and her stepson/object of desire, Hippolytus. Perhaps it was a bit too long, and perhaps it was a bit too tawdry. There was so much explicit sexual content that it lost its power to shock, and became more of an irritant. Yes, this particular Greek tragedy is about desire in its extreme, but this hyper-sexualized version made it seem cheap, rather than the intense physical and psychological conflict that it really is. I must not have been alone in my reaction to the play, because a large amount of people in the balcony left at intermission. I wish they had stayed the extra hour, because Isabelle Huppert was hilariously brilliant as lecturer Elizabeth Costello. Honestly, it was the opportunity to witness her versatility as an actress that made the whole evening worth it.

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    1. "this hyper-sexualized version made it seem cheap, rather than the intense physical and psychological conflict that it really is." --that's a helpful way of explaining the objection!

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  7. Great energy tonight, Friday. The production is an intensely caustic reflection of modern life. Each scene is subject to interpolation in the vein of Joyce's Ulysses. Sarah Kane's text slides in an out, as if it were the zoom of a microscope. Housed in a space clinical which houses a space industrial which houses a space zoo cage, reality alternates from outer to inner, surface to suppressed, spiritual to animal, ancient to post-modern. Ultimately, the play is about our struggle to love.

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    1. Our struggle to love? Is that what these people were hammer-flogging me to death about? The struggle to love? If it's love, real love, not something else that pretends to be love, there's no struggle. But perhaps the struggle, the real struggle presented in this production, lies with the dancer: a lost and fledgling Showgirl struggling to find a pole in a Vegas strip club to wrap herself around. Indeed it was all about struggle...and pain and violence and fetishism and trauma and sexual neuroticism and chaos and brutality and abuse and simple-minded stupidity--all the things we're attracted to, the "reflections of modern life" that many theatre practitioners and film makers believe modern spectators flock to see. And the "interpolation", as a textual hermeneutic device, is fine in private study or literary academia, but in a living and organic theatre piece using soft-porn and psycho-sexual deviancy as its guiding leitmotifs, its torture. However, if it all sounds like your cup of tea, then this is your ticket.

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    2. I feel a lot of anger in your reply. I'm not really sure why. It sounds as though the way sexuality was handled in the play really bothered you. I can understand that. But Sarah Kane's writing was a feature of this play. That was how the show was advertised. You weren't deceived. You weren't cheated. You aren't a victim. You only represent your opinion.

      You also don't get to say what devices can and can't be used in a work of art. You know better than that.

      We are responsible for the way things around us are interpreted. If you were being hammer-flogged, you were holding the hammer.

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    3. I don't claim to represent anything BUT my opinion, which is what my reply is. So I feel neither deceived, cheated or victimized. Theatre practitioners can use whatever devices they please, and forums like this exist so that those devices can be commented on. I do know that, but I don't know better than that. And be careful about your anger. Someone may make a lurid piece of "art" about it.

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    4. Does that mean you feel someone made "art" about your anger? Did the vacuousness, claustrophobia, sterility, inadequacy, rage and arrogance of the material touch you deeper than you first recognized? I'm genuinely asking.

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    5. One other note I'd like to throw in there and this may not apply to your feelings, but I read a lot of other comments about the pretentiousness of the material. Um, did anyone take a look at the audience? In the cafe, pre-show? It's sort of gag-worthy the kind of grooming that affects theatre culture. People dressed in black. Everyone looking very academic and the woolly students filling the flanks of the audience. Gay men and their aesthetics. Crabby old folks and their traditionalism. Heavy theoretical words on monitors floating behind the loitering. It's kind of pretentious. It's like we're in a conversation with ourselves, really.

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    6. My genuine reply to your question is that no one made "art" about my anger, because I was not angry, and never said I was. You, however, said YOU were angry. strongly stated in the first sentence of your first reply As far as the action in the lobby is concerned, I took no notice, and never do, often arriving just before curtain. I'm 6' tall, 162 pounds, green eyes and gruesomely handsome, no one ever takes notice of me, and I slip in quiet as a church mouse. By the way, I'm familiar with Kane's stuff, saw the excellent "Blasted" as Soho Rep a few years ago, so I'm not at all squeamish or prudish when it comes to sexuality or anything else. I just become disgusted by theatre work that is gratuitous, cheap, pandering, obnoxious and mind numbingly stupid.

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    7. Well, you sound kind of full of yourself. I don't mean that as a challenge or anything. I mean we're all guilty of it at some point or other. Who cares what you look like? You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but it sounds like it's more about you than it is the show or your feelings about it. You sound like you just want to be right.

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    8. How I look was just a joke in response to being looked at in the lobby, or about how everyone else looks, once again, a point that YOU raised. I actually look nothing like that, and you're right, no one cares or should. Watching the BAM audience reaction, which is always the same, is proof rather that I am NOT right, since the show received a standing ovation. So it's not about my self-righteousness either. As I said, it is all merely an opinion. Nothing more. I'm right only in my own mind, no further. Everyone else who writes in a forum like this is right too. It's hard to believe how many people can be right at the same time. Far be it for me to want to abuse anyone of their right thoughts.

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    9. I feel like this discussion we've had, if looked at closely, justifies the play we watched. Look at what modern life has become: self-absorbed, defensive, narcissistic, lonely, mediated reality that can't listen or love.

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    10. There's only ONE reason that justifies the existence of Phaedra(s): we don't live in a society with a Cultural Commissar that decides what is art and what isn't, and BAM is a producing entity that makes its own choices on what the public should see, and leaves it up to its patrons to decide the nature of what they've experienced. If I've decided that Phaedra(s) is a work of degeneracy, there's someone to my right who will believe it to be a work of brilliance, and to my left another still who will call it a work of genius. Better that way than a Cultural Commissar who will make that distinction before the three of us gets a chance to see it, trying as it is for those who must endure the torture to the end (as I chose to do) or leave in disgust at intermission. I can take apart each of the generalized items you've listed that justify Phaedra(s) existence, but three (Love, Loneliness, Listen) in particular deserve a brief comment: I personally found Love over 48 years ago and still reap its joyful fruits; have no idea what Loneliness is; and have been a regular patron of BAM for three decades, have had many compelling experiences, as well as being subjected to many a stinker, but I Listened carefully to Phaedra(s) for 3 1/2 hours, and its smell was particularly odiferous. Be well.

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  8. Couldn't stay until the end because it was so pretentious. But even if I had wanted to watch more it was nearly impossible because the supertitles were placed, from my seat, so that I could either read them (and there are a LOT of words) or watch the actors directly in front of me (I was in the second row) but never both. Most of the time I had people acting within a few feet of me and my head was turned away, which is absurd. What an awful way to put together a production.

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  9. Horrible! Bad theater. It had no dramatic substance. Acting was disappointing. I left during the intermission, and only out of courtesy to the others theatergoers seated next to me. I still can't believe BAM brought this. I would need to start second guessing BAM's offers.

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  10. Thought the NYT review was overly kind ... I'm baffled, if this is cutting edge theatre the knife was dull ... Hopefully the remainder of the season revives my faith in BAM

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  11. We liked part one's disco fever/gentlemen's club/horror show a lot. Part two's louche/angsty-teenagers/neurotic mom not so much. Alas, had to leave at intermission, so missed part three. Oenone, Doctor, Hippolyte 1/Dog stood out.

    Huppert - I know some of Sarah Kane's work, so expected alienation, violence, off-humor and wounds. Huppert interpreted Kane brilliantly.

    We arrived a bit late, so sat in the lobby watching live video for about 15 minutes. Glad we did as, surprisingly, the set did not allow for clear aisle seat sight lines. Ambivalent about the set - nary a labyrinthine vibe. I do agree about the supertitles - too many screens not maximally placed.

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    1. 1. What was it about "part one's disco fever/gentleman's club/horror show" that pleased you so much, but which "Part two's louche/angsty-teenagers/neurotic mom" couldn't equal?
      2. Though you missed nothing by missing part three, you arrived late and left at intermission. Is your attendance at theatre usually such a flighty exercise?
      3. Why were Oenone, Doctor, Hippolyte, and, particularly, 1/Dog" such standouts for you?
      4. What exactly was "brilliant" about Huppert's interpretation of Kane?
      5. What exactly is "a labyrinthine vibe"?

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  12. Huppert Great, Play UGGGHHHH, Dozed often as there was nothing to see. best part was the last 30 minute interview, Hippert shone there!

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  13. I hated it from the moment the opening song/dance stopped. Felt trapped in my seat in the middle of my row, so couldn't escape till the intermission. The second play was more watchable than the first, but that is saying very little. Glad I missed #3. There is edgy, and then there trash

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