Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – RETURNING TO REIMS & KINGS: Articulating the frustrations of a broken political system

• By drediman
• February 26, 2018
• No Comments

Nina Hoss in Thomas Ostermeier’s production of “Returning to Reims” at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

This weekend, Schaubühne Berlin’s production of Returning to Reims (HGHLY RECOMMENDED) ended its limited run at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The play contemplates – in a layered, deeply personal way – the frustrations of a broken political system. Domestically, we here in the U.S. know that this is certainly the case in our current times. But what Returning to Reims seems to depressingly suggest, in the guise of a memoir by French philosopher Didier Eribon, is that this broken state is endemic of politics in general, not just the U.S. of the 2010s. In the memoir, which in the production is portrayed as a film documentary in the works (Homeland’s quietly implacable Nina Hoss, seated in a sound studio, coolly played the documentary’s narrator), one of the key phenomena explored is how the left-wing politicians have abandoned the working-class, who have, as a result, turned to the right-wing National Front. Sound familiar? Despite this downbeat observation, the show ends, surprisingly, on a somewhat hopeful, very personal note. Director Thomas Ostermeier, whose outrageously renegade Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this season was a sensation, here helms with a less confrontational but no less firm and visionary hand. Mr. Ostermeier is a theatrical auteur to keep an eye on, à la Ivo van Hove.

Gillian Jacobs and Rachel Leslie in Sarah Burgess’s “Kings” at The Public Theater.

A more straightforward approach to  is taken by playwright Sarah Burgess in her new play Kings (RECOMMENDED), which is currently running at The Public Theater. Like her previous play Dry Powder, which was also produced by The Public Theater and also directed by the sought-after Thomas Kail (of Hamilton fame), her latest play is eager to dissect the systems that make our world go round. In Dry Powder, it was banking and finance; in Kings, it’s our broken political system. In the play, the slimy dealings of Washington, with its ruthless, unsavory roster of politicians and lobbyists, are exposed for being driven driven by corporate money as opposed to actually listening to what the constituents have to say. Although the play, solidly acted and directed, does a much more convincing job of depicting the unfortunate, frustrating realities of U.S. politics than The Parisian Woman by Beau Willimon (of House of Cards fame) – which closes on Broadway this week – both works take a made-for-television approach that reduces its topical subject matter to two-dimensionality. Despite its somewhat pretentious, less accessible road map, I felt that Mr. Ostermeier’s dissected, amorphous Returning to Reims served these pressing issues with more respect, urgency, and, ultimately, hope.

RETURNING TO REIMS
Off-Broadway, Play
Schaubühne Berlin at St. Ann’s Warehouse
2 hours (without an intermission)
Closed

KINGS
Off-Broadway, Play
The Public Theater
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through April 1