Archived Edition: April 11, 2007 | Back to Current	Sep 09, 2010

Director modernizes Plato in new comedy

Plato’s Symposium has never gotten so many laughs. Greatly modified and presented in a single performance at MASS MoCA as a play called The Dinner Party this Saturday, the improvisational piece was a hit. And I do mean improvisational: almost every line was made up on the spot, though I wouldn’t have noticed it had I not known beforehand.

No, the actors didn’t forget their lines. It was all part of director David Herskovits’ plan. He brought the company, Target Margin Theater, to MASS MoCA for a two-week retreat, wherein he, every actor, a few interns and MASS MoCA employees rethought the Symposium as a truly wonderful play.

Each of the actors read the dialogue several times, and they created characters from the raw ideas each discussed. Each actor applied his or her own name and sex to the characters they played, so the play was a little confusing but free of ostentatiously Greek names. Herskovits explained his dislike of using names like ‘Erixymachus’ as a main reason for this choice.

Pausanius, now called ‘Ian,’ thus becomes something of a Woody Allen. His discourse on man/boy love is transformed by comparison to the aging actor/writer, though of course there is no exact present-day analogue. Still, as an update and a faithful rendering of the sly self-justification, the analogy goes a long way.

Aristophanes (‘Steven’) becomes a jokester whose half-serious ‘history of love’ is transfigured into a hilarious pantomime. Suffice it to say, his explanation of how Zeus decided to move people’s genitals from the back to the front was illustrated by the other actors using some well-placed cantaloupe sections, bananas and kiwis. The voice of Zeus is contributed by a MASS MoCA employee.

The Diotima of Socrates’ story becomes the Hungarian-accented ‘Mary from Kansas,’ who wears an apron and, in the course of her speech, puts a cooking bowl upside-down on her head.

Aristodemus/Apollodorus (‘Mary,’ playing the two mixed into one character) is played by the same actor. Mary, reborn as an annoying country bumpkin in love with ‘Stephanie,’ chatters inanely, makes offensive comments and carries a pack of beer. In the performance, it is easy to see why the other characters did not invite Mary to the party; she is delightfully crass and irritating, as Aristodemus of the dialogues is not (or at least, not overtly).

Socrates (‘Stephanie’) is able to turn many of her questions into subtle

innuendo, inflected by gesture. At the beginning of the play, Stephanie escorts Mary to the party, and as in the dialogues, stops often to stare into the distance, thinking. The bit of physical comedy – Mary, constantly chattering, is oblivious to the fact that Stephanie has stopped to stare off into the distance – actually comes directly from the beginning of the Symposium, but is much funnier onstage.

At this point, I should probably note that the play is the product of only two weeks of intensive rehearsals held at MASS MoCA, though the play looks almost polished enough (and is certainly enjoyable enough) to be a finished product with months of rehearsals under its belt. MASS MoCA provided housing for the troupe and a space in which they could rehearse 24 hours a day, every day. The actors, most of whom usually work other jobs, had an unprecedented opportunity to focus on the project.

One wall of the performance space is still hung with notes on the various characters that were used during rehearsals.

The set, while also unfinished, is delightful, with various rolling door frames hung with beads, rearranged to suit the scene as the actors reenact parts of each others’ monologues. Some of it will be altered in the future; while other props, like a refrigerator carton labeled ‘fridge,’ will apparently remain in the finished production. There is a small chair labeled ‘stove’ in the background. In the foreground, another chair is labeled ‘toilet’. There is a toilet seat on it.

The toilet plays a part in the story when Erixymachus (‘Greg’), a pompous doctor, describes his sneeze cure for hiccups. The beauty of the show’s improvisational nature is evident as the doctor makes up several more steps to the remedy (“take twenty-seven sips of water in the next three seconds…”). I wish this part of the play had been extended; certainly, today’s constant updates, reminding us that everything causes cancer, leave plenty of room for jokes about quackery.

The music was provided by a completely visible sound technician playing a character called David (Diana Konopa) – presumably a stand-in for the director. According to Herskovits, the music was intended to play several roles in the play: it sometimes drowned out boring speeches, it interrupted people, it formed a background and acted as its own effect. I found most of the music very effective. In particular, I enjoyed the rollicking background to the skit that formed part of Steven’s discourse.

The play ended with a voiceover describing Alcibiades’ entrance, mostly, said Herskovits, because the troupe improvised the play in order and simply never got to Alcibiades’ part. We can expect a much more polished and finished production (though still improvised) when the completed show comes to The Kitchen in New York City on June 14.