A classic text by the 10th-century Saxon nun Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim inspires two new plays being performed as a double bill at 59E59 Theaters.
Three nuns hard at work at their convent look up to discover that the sky is falling …
It could be the beginning of a joke, or a New Yorker cartoon. But it’s the opening scene in “The Collision and What Came After, or, Gunch!,” a play being presented alongside “The Martyrdom” by Two Headed Rep at 59E59 Theaters. Despite the comic potential of this setup, these works, inspired by the writing of the 10th-century nun and playwright Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, are neither as funny nor — at two hours and 40 minutes — as snappy as they could be.
In “The Collision,” written by Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, the patient Sister Gudrun (Emma Ramos) and the critical Sister Anise (Lizzie Fox) try to teach the young Sister Gunch (Layla Khoshnoudi) the responsibilities of the ideal nun: doing chores, praying, hand-copying Bibles — you know, the usual. But Gunch is foul-mouthed, blunt and curious about more than just God. “All of nature is vile and fecund and touching itself,” she says with lustful wonder, recounting a time she watched one goat mount another.
When a giant meteorite lands near the convent, the abbess goes the way of the Wicked Witch of the East and Gunch suffers a fatal attack that she miraculously survives. The event forces the characters to reconsider the lessons in faith they’ve been taught — which messages are prophetic and which ones heretical, and why.
The script has a few delicately written passages, for example, when Gudrun describes “gray-black clouds” that gather “as if trying to bind the sky like a wound.” The performers also have some standout moments: Halima Henderson, who plays a couple of secondary characters, has a priceless bit as a messenger with no grasp of social cues. And Khoshnoudi, with her dreamy glances and devilish grin, could have her own play, her own TV series, in fact, as the delightfully peculiar Gunch.
As for the story itself, it’s zany, though to what end isn’t always clear; Lily Riopelle’s direction, which incorporates physical humor and playful props (a severed hand, a dead pigeon and a chicken called “little queen,” designed by Liz Oakley), often reads as amateurish. Though the play gets a lot of mileage from its narrative twists and turns, which pull the story into the realms of science fiction and absurdism, the script can’t successfully pull off its final maneuver, an explicit criticism of institutional religion and a grand statement on storytelling.
“A story is a snake, and we are mice inside it, swallowed whole but still alive,” a character says at one point. That sentiment can be applied to this play, which swallows its characters — and some narrative logic — in its bizarre contortions.
If “The Collision” is more enamored with its quirks than with cohesive storytelling, then “The Martyrdom” is its antipode, a play so procedural that it leaves little space for strangeness and wonder.
After a brief intermission, the four actresses return for this second play, the full title of which is so long that reading it requires its own intermission: “The Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins Agape, Chionia, and Irena, by Hrotsvitha the Nun of Gandersheim, as Told Throughout the Last Millennium by the Men, Women, Scholars, Monastics, Puppets, and Theater Companies (Like This One) Who Loved Her, or: Dulcitius.”
“The Martyrdom,” directed by Molly Clifford, is based on Hrotsvitha’s play “Dulcitius,” about three pious sisters who try to remain chaste despite the intentions of lascivious politicians. “Dulcitius” appears throughout the course of “The Martyrdom,” though in different pieces and different forms.
With translation by Lizzie Fox and new text by Amanda Keating, “The Martyrdom” is a history lesson, celebrating the legacy of Hrotsvitha, who is considered to be the first female playwright to have her work recorded, by providing a timeline of major incarnations of “Dulcitius.”
So the show begins in a monastery during Hrotsvitha’s lifetime, where a council or monks reviews the playwright’s work. Then centuries later, Hungarian nuns write a modern, vernacular adaptation of “Dulcitius.” Then there are the French artists who use marionettes to tell the tale of the three sisters. Then the British suffragist in the 1800s, and an American nun at the University of Michigan in the 1950s. It’s a clever move for such dated material: In each scene the characters act out parts of the play, each version reflecting the changing context of the material over time. After each section, a fourth-wall-breaking educational moment occurs when the actresses provide more details about Hrotsvitha’s text and its various productions.
The result, unfortunately, is colorless and, like “The Collision,” unnecessarily long. “The Martyrdom” tries to stretch out scenes of Hrotsvitha’s play across history to suit its structure, despite the fact that the play’s plot is already pretty anemic, so there’s not enough action to go around.
It doesn’t help that Cate McCrea’s set design for the tiny theater, which seats about 50, is rather bland: a plain back wall, a long rectangular bar that bisects the length of the stage, serving as a table or desk or bench as needed.
Somewhere between “The Collision” and “The Martyrdom” is a holy middle ground of oddity and structure, chaos and order, that would make even a Saxon nun from the 10th century say, “Amen.”
The Collision / The Martyrdom
Through Feb. 5 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
