Review: Philosophical BATTLEFIELD at the Guthrie Theater

Now in his 90s, innovative and influential director Peter Brook is still making theater. 30 years ago, he staged a 9 hour marathon depicting portions of the great Hindu epic THE MAHABARATA to wide acclaim and some controversy. With BATTLEFIELD, he and his collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne return to that source material for an elegiac and stripped down 70 minute meditation on life, death, and how to resist despair.

This is theater for the philosophically minded. If you want fancy costumes or snappy dialogue or elaborate stage action, skip this. But if you want to see four actors work with a world class musician on a bare stage with artistry and restraint, or if you want an opportunity to contemplate how to go on after devastation has visited your landscape (inner or outer), then BATTLEFIELD is for you.

It is not without humor. With just a few shifts in movement, the actors morph into various creatures (a mongoose, a snake, the spirit of the Ganges, etc.) required by the parables that pop up as the central character learns life lessons from sages he visits. At one point, an actor gives away clothing to the front row of the audience in a gentle penetration of the proscenium. Large solid colored cloth pieces in red, blue, and saffron are used in various ways to provide all the stage craft.

This befits a production staged by the author of several books on theater, including THE EMPTY SPACE, which has been translated into 15 languages, and is related to Jerzy Grotowski's articulation of Poor Theater. Brook has a questing mind, and has always been willing to take up theory and make it walk. He directed his first show at the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was just 21. He cites director Joan Littlewood as influential in his development. In his late 30s, he directed MARAT/SADE, bringing Artaud's ideas about a Theater of Cruelty together with Brechtian Epic Theater in startlingly effective ways. His all-white box production of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in 1970 jumped conceptual design and interpretation forward, doing a lot to liberate Shakespeare from musty historicism.

Then, at midlife, Brook left England and established the International Centre for Theatre Research on the outskirts of Paris, based in the old Bouffes du Nord Theatre. He gathered collaborators from all over the world, and they set out to discover universal stories and storytelling methods that could work with people anywhere. In one famous experiment, his company walked from village to village in East Africa, preceded by a very young Elizabeth Swados with her guitar. Her job was to gather an audience so that when the rest of the troupe arrived, a play could be shared across language and cultural barriers. Their source material then, reworked by French playwright Jean-Claude Carrière, was a poem, a classic of Persian literature, called THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS.

Soon thereafter, he embarked on the vast project of THE MAHABARATA, again using Carrière as adaptor. What eventually emerged was first publicly staged in 1985, as one play in three parts, which took a total of 9 hours to perform (11 counting intermissions). It would tour the world for four years, and generate both high praise and scholarly discussion about colonial appropriation, exploitation, and orientalism.

It makes eminent good sense that music would become a crucial arrow in Brook's quiver as he attempted to make theater for audiences from many cultural and language backgrounds. In BATTLEFIELD, the fifth character, and an absolutely essential one, is the eminent Japanese drummer Toshi Tsuchitori, who has himself published about prehistoric music. Working only with his hands and a single djembe, in full view of the audience and within steps of the actors, he provides a sonic environment that creates the worlds they move through-both inner and outer.

This includes masterful use of silence, just as the actors have mastered the power of stillness. They are a diverse group, internationally, racially, and by age. Carole Karamara is from Rwanda, and has had a long career in dance and music as well as theater. Sean O'Callaghan is Irish, and has worked throughout the UK and Canada. Ery Nzaramba describes himself as a Rwandan actor based in the UK who trained in Belgium; he speaks six languages and has a long list of credits despite his relative youth. Jared McNeill is an American actor, trained at Fordham, whose credits include New York and regional theaters as well as several years with Brook.

So, to plot: BATTLEFIELD begins with a new king taking over from an old blind one after a pyrrhic victory that has killed off all his brothers and cousins and laid waste to the world. His questions include: How do we go on? and Where is justice? Time skips forward as he acquires wisdom, never sufficient to alleviate suffering altogether, until the final words of the play are spoken. They are these: "I will tell you all that you want to know." Thereafter, all speech is foregone in favor of the music of the drummer's hands in an extended, haunting drum solo. It induced the longest hush I have ever witnessed shared by audience and actors before lights gently crept up, returning us to our various and separate journeys.

Peter Brook himself travelled to the city to speak with audiences after the Easter night performance. BATTLEFIELD plays just 11 shows, closing on April 23. If you are a seeker, or a serious student of theater, and anywhere near where this show plays, I recommend it to your attention.

Photo Credit: Caroline Moreau