By CLIVE BARNES
The New York Times
« The best thing he has done in years »
Presumably, even critics develop.
When I first saw Fernando Arrabal’s play
“The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria”
at Britain: National Theater.
I was modesty somewhat unimpressed.
I did not really understand it -perhaps simply because
all critics are slightly behind
their times. It is not so much
an occupational hazard as an
occupational disease, and
should be recognized as such
and treated kindly. We do our best.
On Friday night at the
La Mama Annex on East Fourth Street,
the Nelly Vivas Company
gave the Arrabal play
its New York premiere, and
I was overwhelmed. It was a
great theatrical experience.
A play about relationships that genuinely related.
Now the simple explanation in such circumstances is
to say that the second staging was so much better.
But I suspect it wasn’t. The National Theater production
was staged by the brilliant
South American director Victor García
and it starred Jim Dale.
and Anthony Hopkins.
No carc had been spared.
But for me it didn’t really work -I
was interested but totally puzzled.
Now at La MamaTom O ‘Horgan has staged it -it is
the best thing he has done in years -in a very different
fashion, and I found it most beautiful and interesting.
***
The play is concerned with
two people living together,
and the games they play, the
roles they assume the gestures they make.
It has the fantasy of the poetically sane.
There are two people:
One is the Architect and the other is
the Emperor -it might be thought that they
simbolize special aspects of life.
But that would not be quite true.
Mr. Arrabal is more subtle than that.
Indeed, just as all
dreams and all fantasies that
one has emerge from the single psyche,
so indeed both of these men, arguing, accusing,
condemning, fighting, loving
and losing, could indeed be
a representation of one person.
On one all ton human soul in conflict.
But probably not. There does seem to be
an dialogue here, and a dialogue
not between the contradictory forces of human nature,
but a dialogue between two people missing out in love.
They embrace, they devour, they die.
***
It is the texture of the play
that is so fascinating and important.
It has layers to it.
At one time you think you
are seeing this, at another time you are confident you
are seeing that. If the art of
poetry is ambiguity raised to the level
the other dreams or
nightmares -and. by the way,
it is- then this play is almost
impossibly poetic.
The language floats, jumps and sparkles.
It has been translated by
Everard d’Harnoncourt and Adele Shank.
and quite obviously they have
done a fine job. There is a
dazzling madness of words
scattered across the airy like
diamante stars.
The play is a confrontation.
It takes place on an island.
Two people confined
and in conflict and in love.
The Architect and the Emperor
-the two symbols, perhaps, of the human condition
on its creative level. Or, perhaps, the way we all,
all of us, are -the titles themselves
carry their own message. But
interestingly Mr. Arrabal permits the two of them
-these two aspects of personality-
continually to switch roles.
He is saying that in all of
us there: is an Architect someone
who needs to build and control,
and an Emperor who needs to reign.
The concept is interesting, of course,
but what makes it compelling
is Mr. Arrabal’s brilliant use
of it. The man dreams in the
images of reality. He reminds
me of another Spanish artist. Goya
-and the Caprichos sketches-
the « dream, » as Goya put it,
“of reason produces monsters. »
***
Mr. Arrabal is severely
anticlerical -his attacks on
the church are bloody and
unbound -but he may even be severely antihuman.
One has a sense -a feel you have
for another satirist such as
Jonathan Swift- that he has
looked at us carefully , perhaps, at least hopefully,
but too carefully, and found us disappointing.
The play does play God.
but it plays it very convincingly.
One reason of course
is Mr. O‘Horgan’s elegantly
inventive production, which
stages the play with precisely
the explosive exposition that
its statement demands, and
also the acting. There are
two alternative casts. On the
night the roles were
taken with love and care by
Lazaro Perez as the Archi-
tact and Ronald Perlman as
the Emperor. They were brilliant
in an evening of dizzy revelation.
Mr. Arrabal with his perceptions, absurdities,
and understanding is
a playwright to be honored, treasured
and understood. In this
play he is saying something
about the isolation, the solitariness
and the need of man that, so far, as I
cat, see, no other playwright
has quite gotten on stage be-
fore. A playwright reveals,
himself when in the electric
instant of the moment he
tells us the story of our lives.
Mr. Arrabal does that with
the grace of the fantastic and
the gaucheness of the real.
_________________________________
___
The Cast
THE ARCHITECT AND THE EMPEROR
OF ASSYRIA by Fernando Arrabal.
Directed by Tom O Horgan;
settings by Bill Stablie;
lighting by Cheryl Thacker;
costumes by Joseph Aulisi.
Written in l965 translated
by Everard d’Harmoncourt and Adele Shank.
Production coordinator, Nelly Vivas.
Production Stage managers, Marc Cohen.
Galan Mc Kinley.
La Mama Annex presents Nelly Vivas Company.
At La Mama Annex, 66 East Fourth Street .
The Architect……..………………..Lazaro Perez
The Emperor.………………….Ronald Perlman
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propos d'un jour 