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azdak at 05:19pm on 06/08/2017
azdak at 05:19pm on 06/08/2017Having finished Dance of the Vampires, I have to say it's terribly rape-y. It's not just all the male gaze-y stuff about Sarah, constantly being observed naked in her bathtub by a succession of men (and, of course, the audience), or Chagal's controlling attitude to her sexuality, or even her being bitten by Krolock (which at least is consensual, even if she appears to regret it immediately afterwards). I don't like any of that, but it's harmless compared with what happens to poor Magda, who actually SINGS about how she doesn't like being raped by Chagal (kind of a bleak topic for a comic musical, as nobody involved in the productions ever appears to have said), and then when she tries to turn the tables on him, by saying to his corpse "Who's the one with the power now?" gets non-consensually bitten and discovers she just loves having sex with her rapist after all (she literally sings that - I'm not reading between the lines here). Even if I hadn't known the story was by Polanksi, I would not have been totally surprised to learn that the author went on to violently rape a thirteen year old girl. As I said, it's a very rape-y text.
Also, the make-up and body language makes Chagal look as if he's playing Shylock in a Nazi production of the Merchant of Venice and I am more than slightly surprised that no one on the creative team questioned this, given that it is, after all, an Austrian production. This, unlike the rapiness, is not Polanksi's fault - the film Chagal is much less stereotypically Jewish (and yet, weirdly, in the film the audience is assumed to be able to make the connection when Chagal scoffs at Magda's cross, saying "Have you got the wrong vampire!", while in the musical he carefully explains "That trick won't work - I'm a Jewish vampire!" Unsurprisingly, I have changed this back.)
Also, the make-up and body language makes Chagal look as if he's playing Shylock in a Nazi production of the Merchant of Venice and I am more than slightly surprised that no one on the creative team questioned this, given that it is, after all, an Austrian production. This, unlike the rapiness, is not Polanksi's fault - the film Chagal is much less stereotypically Jewish (and yet, weirdly, in the film the audience is assumed to be able to make the connection when Chagal scoffs at Magda's cross, saying "Have you got the wrong vampire!", while in the musical he carefully explains "That trick won't work - I'm a Jewish vampire!" Unsurprisingly, I have changed this back.)
(no subject)
I have succumbed to the lure of the Swiss production in September* partly because the trailer makes it look interesting on this front. The moment you take von Krolock and Sarah out of their nineteenth-century via Hammer fairytale costumes and present her as a modern teenager and him as a Russian oligarch with a hint of Edwardian Swiss banker, then the power disparity and the element of older powerful man preying on young woman becomes visible in a much more overt way. I'm interested to see how it works out on stage.
I don't like the Austrian/German portrayal of Chagal and found it uncomfortable in the theatre (this is something that at least English-language fandom seems to go nowhere near at all, though there are some fics that are crashingly tone-deaf at best. The aforementioned podcast is the sole place I've seen it mentioned). But I think that the staging is in part Polanski's fault; he's certainly had the kind of creative control that could have changed if it he wanted. Part of me thinks "Unlike Polanski, Steinmann, and Kunze I'm not Jewish, who am I to object if this is what they want to do?" and part of me thinks "Yes, but nor is most of your audience and you've no guarantee they won't take it as laughing along with stereotypes, and your Jewish audience who don't find it funny also deserves consideration". I do think that the text (as opposed to the visuals) treads the line with greater care in avoiding some common anti-Semitic stereotypes. Chagal appears to be a competent innkeeper and he's not rapacious: to make a musical comparison, he's not a Jewish Thenadier and instead, it is the Count who robs from him (the spectre haunting this part of Europe is Christian feudalism rather than Jewish Communism). And while we do get the cliché overprotective Jewish father of a beautiful daughter who inevitably runs away, it steers well clear of the "O my ducats! O my daughter!" response in making him courageous and determined to rescue her. But the text is irrelevant if your staging gives a different message - in that respect I don't think it's particularly meaningful that Jewish actors have played the part, it's a bigger issue than if one person is OK with it.
I'd like to see an explicitly Jewish Alfred in the theatrical production. It seems perfectly plausible that he should be; he's not quite the young Woody Allen, but there's surely something of a nebbish quality to the character.
(On another note entirely, how did you decide to translate "Sei bereit"?)
*I had resisted, and then the holiday I wanted to do to see bears in Romania was booked up so I thought sod it, I'm going to Switzerland. Though it's a lot more expensive than when I was there last in 2008 during the financial crash, so I am doing the walking part in St Anton.
(no subject)
It is just typical of fandom to get all het-up over consent in Alfred/Herbert and ignore Magda's canonical repeated rape. Bollocks to them, I say.
The Swiss production sounds both fascinating and as if it has missed the whole point - if you are not sending up the whole Gothick vampire tradition a la Carpe Jugulum, then what exactly are you doing? But I shall reserve judgment until you have seen it.
You're probably right about Polanski and creative control, although the puff he wrote for this year's anniversary production suggested to my - possibly over-sensitive - translator's ear that he was completely uninterested in the musical (except, presumably, as a source of cash). And certainly he is aesthetically on a different planet from the VBW (the other musical I did for them was, amazingly, even MORE dire than I had anticipated). So my guess is that he took no interest in the production details, though of course I could be totally wrong. But if I were him I would have objected to hand-rubbing Chagal.
As for "Sei bereit", I was happily under orders not to tinker with the meaning in order to make the lines rhyme or scan, so I went with "Get ready". The person I deal with at the VBW suggested "Be prepared", which would scan, but I scotched that on the grounds that it made the vampires sound like a bunch of Boy Scouts. "Get ready" is not a poetically satisfying translation, but it is what the line means.
(no subject)
Anyway, I can report that the Swiss Tanz der Vampire was excellent. It is less visually gothic/mysterious with the updated setting, but I was pleased with how coherent the whole thing was. They'd evidently put a lot of thought into what they were doing, and thought about the impact. At some point I shall manage a complete review for LJ, but in the meantime Chagal was one of the big wins for me. The actor who was supposed to be playing him was ill, so the director took it on and he was excellent. The whole set-up was more explicit in the locals' awareness of what was in the big castle next door, which made Chagal into a more serious character. Of course, there was still comedy, but you got a real sense of the dread he was living in about Sarah and the vampires, and then his fears coming true. No hand-rubbing required, and I'd like to think that some of the other productions will learn from it. The Act 1 ballet choreography also was different, and instead of it being "Sarah's fantasy of a romantic vampire ball" it was represented as a struggle between Chagal and the Count over her, which of course the former loses, and then afterwards we see him in "Gebet" with his hand over his face in despair. Costume, ordinary suit with skull-cap. Second act, same suit plus the standard leather coat of stage evil. I'm not sure anything can really redeem "Geil zu sein ist komisch", though I liked Magda overall. Again, an updated setting gave a bit more room for her character to be active.
I have the same Boy Scout problem with "Be Prepared" (not a direction I feel any production needs to go in), so "Get ready" seems a good idea for your purposes.
(I'd actually seen both Fiddler on the Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar in August, so representing Jewish characters on stage seems to have been my summer musical theme. Fiddler had just copied the film for costuming - but JCS was more imaginative, helped by avoiding pitfall no. 1: no blond ringlets for Jesus.)
(no subject)
The film of Jesus Christ Superstar features a Jesus who looks like so like David Soul that for years I just assumed it was him. I suppose it's an "If the triangles had a god, he would have three sides" sort of thing.
How was the rest of your holiday? The weather didn't seem to be as bad as had been predicted, at least at this end of the country.
(no subject)
The rest of my holiday was great and I managed some very good walking. It had struck me that in winter the ski forecasts a few days out always promise more snow and colder weather than actually arrives, and that if this held true in summer as well I should be fine, which turned out to be more or less what happened. It was definitely early autumn, though, no glorious late summer flowering.