Playwright: Tonika Todorova
At: The Journeymen at Holy Covenant Church, 925 W. Diversey Parkway
Phone: ( 773 ) 857-5395; $15
Runs through: March 27
The picture of Ludwig Van Beethoven painted by playwright-director Tonika Todorova is of an individual as romantic as the age in which he wrote. But Fur Beethoven explores its subject's life in a theatrical, rather than literary, manner. Ironically, the very success of this concept—relying as it does upon emotionally charged images conveying what dry recitations of facts presumably cannot—is precisely what makes it advisable to read a book or two about Ludwig Van before seeing the show.
Certainly, Beethoven had the makings of a bad-boy hero. His family was poor, his father an abusive alcoholic who dragged him out of bed at night to practice until dawn, his mother a consumptive codependent doting on her sons. The young musician grew to express himself with an intensity disturbing to even his closest associates. With the discovery that he was gradually going deaf, he became even more withdrawn in his attempts to hide his condition, even as he kept writing the music we today laud as the work of a genius.
Lest we forget the stakes in our protagonist's turbulent progress, Todorova stations keyboardist Elly Anderson stageside to supply us incidental music ranging from sleepy piano exercises to dazzling concertos forged at the height of the composer's creative powers. The arc of his development is illustrated through the attentions of a spectral Muse, who comforts both the lonely boy and the obsessed adult. And when his world is silenced, so is ours.
These devices are justifiable from a conceptual standpoint, but their enigmatic nature renders them sometimes counterproductive. Confusion over characters' identities, always a hazard in ensemble casting, is compounded when there are no verbal cues—for the latter part of the play, we hear only what our aurally-impaired protagonist hears—to assist us in distinguishing the various personae. The synopsis of events provided in the playbill helps, but not enough. And some of the striking visual images—a Goya-esque party of masked death-angels, for example—occupy the stage longer than necessary.
But if Fair Beethoven's reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, the scope of its ambitious vision—and, let's not forget, its brilliant musical score—is ample compensation for its shortcomings.