The Washington Post "Lulu" Review - 22 June 2001

Siren Song: The Dreadful Allure of "Lulu"

By Nelson Pressley Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 22, 2001

Frank Wedekind's lurid, seldom-staged "Lulu" revolves around one of the most notorious femmes fatales ever created; it's a macabre fantasia on sex and death. Director Jonathan Kent's captivating staging refines the theme to watching and fantasizing: the prelude to and craving for sex and death. Lust-drunk characters murmur about committing sex crimes; they threaten to martyr themselves at the provocative, pliant Lulu's feet. Then they do it. Perhaps the chief thing that the Almeida Theatre's calculatingly strange production proves about Wedekind's 19th-century drama is that although it's awkward, it's certainly playable.

This "Lulu," which opened Wednesday night at the Eisenhower Theater as the last play in the Kennedy Center's festival of British arts, is a complicated show -- almost distastefully icy and arch in the first act, haunting and piteous in the second. But the story really moves in Kent's cleverly acted, darkly alluring production. Watching is a persistent motif, though of course these characters do a lot more than look. They grapple, they grope, they grind; the show drips with sex. (Between this and the messy, convincing violence, this "Lulu" -- like any "Lulu" worth its salt -- is for mature audiences only.) Between the come-ons, adultery, blackmail and murder, much of which is greeted with dry laughter by the brittle characters, there is no shortage of action. But the intoxicated gaze, through which Lulu's admirers pour their various desires as if she were an empty vessel, is critical to Kent.

The show opens with a mysterious figure seated at the edge of the stage; like the audience, he's on the outside of a grimy row of panes looking in at Lulu. In a funny, creepy bit, two characters hold up a Pierrot costume of Lulu's and breathlessly discuss how her body fits into it. The physical details of their points of interest (if not of her actual body) seem to spring to life as they fondle the garment with rapturous specificity. It's a tremendously striking image of Lulu as the stuff of dreams. And then there she is in the flesh. Lithe star Anna Friel flutters around the stage in that sheer Pierrot outfit, and the show does more than dare you to stare at her ripe body. It begs you to.

The show is a grim tour through Lulu's lovers, admirers and would-be possessors. Dr. Goll, Lulu's portly old husband, has commissioned a painting of her by Eduard Schwarz, a young artist. When Goll catches Schwarz and Lulu in a compromising position on a tiger-skin rug, he keels over dead, and Schwarz ascends to the position of Lulu's husband. You'd think the artist, played like an adolescent with a crush by James Hillier, would be less prone to shock. But he's a dreamer who christens Lulu "Eve"; all of her men have their own pet names for her. The deadly pattern repeats, yet Dr. Schoning, Lulu's longtime clandestine lover, marries her anyway. For a number of reasons, there's no way out of it. And so it goes, with the survivors often laughing over the bodies as they walk away from the wreckage.

The acting has a nefarious, underworld quality; a seamy desperation hangs in the air that makes it almost understandable when characters writhe on the floor and beg for one another. (Subtlety wasn't among Wedekind's virtues; in style and substance, this is a chronicle of excess.) Alan Howard sets a sinister tone as Dr. Schoning, who sees himself as Lulu's puppet master -- until he begins to get played himself. Howard speaks with a hard edge in his voice and uses Schoning's cane to prod Lulu's privates at will; he's an elegant but intimidating degenerate.

Oliver Milburn has a hungry, dangerous smile as Dr. Schoning's son, and Tom Georgeson is a wily old roughneck as Schigolch, the man who raised Lulu (he may or may not be her father). Johanna ter Steege powers her way through desperate rants as the yearning Countess of Geschwitz, and Peter Sullivan oozes treachery as Jack, the dark figure who watches from the periphery until "Lulu" nears its end and the scene shifts to from Germany and Paris to London.

Friel is ravishing, and with her sprightly energy and directness she comes awfully close to being the "earth spirit" that was the title of one of the two plays that make up this 2 1/2-hour "Lulu." (The adaptation is by Nicholas Wright, from a translation by Wes Williams.) Friel's Lulu is a true femme fatale in Act 1, consciously luring men in for her pleasure. But by Act 2, she seems slightly broken. Her strut has become a wobble, and the show begins to think less about what Lulu does to men than about what men have done to her, apparently since she was quite young. Kent arranges for a gang to gather like vultures behind another grimy windowpane as a young man attempts to seduce an innocent young girl, and I've never seen a group of men in tuxedos look more frighteningly predatory.

A quartet plays moody music during the scene changes, tunes that amount to siren songs to death. It helps thicken the atmosphere with emotion, which is one of the things that really develop in this show. The flip, arch quality of the early going deepens into a disquieting experience that, among other things, draws a very thin line between life and death, with sex perched right on the razor's edge.

Lulu, by Frank Wedekind, adapted by Nicholas Wright from a translation by Wes Williams. Directed by Jonathan Kent. Set, Rob Howell; lighting, Mark Henderson; music, Jonathan Dove; sound, John A. Leonard. With Imogen Slaughter, Leon Lissek, Andrew Ufondu, Jason Pitt, Sid Mitchell, Samia Akudo, Marella Oppenheim, Miles Richardson, Anna Maguire and Francesca Murray-Fuentes. Through July 15 at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater. Call 202-467-4600. © 2001 The Washington Post Company