My feeble high school German knowledge was thoroughly exercised as I watched a dress rehearsal of the German Play. A group of 21 German students has worked all semester to put together two performances of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's comedy "Romulus der Grosse," which will run April 16 and 17 in Maury Hall.
Like any true University event, this play is the product of student organization. The cast has admirably memorized an entire play in German, agreed upon an interpretation and designed and constructed a set.
The play, an "unhistoric historical comedy," as Dürrenmatt claims, focuses on the last days of the fall of the Roman Empire. Romulus, Rome's last emperor, assumed the throne with every intention of allowing Rome to fall into ruin at the hands of the invading Germans. As Rome's judgment day draws nearer, the Roman officers grow increasingly frustrated with Romulus's laziness and his obsession with raising his chickens. The play climaxes in an unexpected twist for both the Germans and Romans and follows the promised unhistorical path. Of course, the actual fall of Rome at the hands of German invaders was not as light-hearted as this play suggests.
The characters themselves are entirely unbelievable in a historical context. Romulus's wife is a frantic busybody somewhat reminiscent of Lucille Ball on a wicked caffeine trip, and the war minister aggressively believes he can single-handedly save Rome.
But they are played well enough and exaggerated enough that the audience attention and understanding is kept.
The cast performs the play with a respectable degree of success. It is an undeniably daunting task to memorize lines in a foreign language and then recite these words with the necessary emotion and stage directions. As a result, some words are muddled in the pronunciation. I often had trouble understanding Romulus's wife, as entertaining as she was, in her frenzied speech.
One student, who plays an old man, tries too hard to slur his lines at times and ends up swallowing them. Every actor occasionally makes a few grammatical mistakes when trying to remember a line, but such errors fall within the understanding that the performance is an amateur college production in a foreign language.
One central theme of the play is the presence of Romulus' chickens, which are brought to life through dances between the scenes. Much like the set, the chickens were invented and dances choreographed and executed by the students. Although they are slightly odd-looking, they serve as comic relief for those that may not understand the sarcastic nature of the play as a whole.
The set for the play has stark post-modernist elements that in some ways seem to clash with the overall classical theme of the play. Actual text from the script has been photocopied onto the backdrop, and pictures of German poets and philosophers alongside busts of Roman emperors decorate a backdrop. Audience members wondering why a photocopy of Goethe's face appears in Romulus's sitting room will find no plain answer in the content of the play.
While this setup allows for multiple interpretations of the scenery and its meanings, it may only heighten the confusion that comes with watching a play in a foreign language. It may be worth talking to cast members after the show to find out more about what they have symbolized in the background.
Because the play is entirely in German, students who aren't studying German will naturally understand little or none of the dialogue. Even German majors will have a difficult time keeping up with what is said in the lengthier monologues, especially when the characters toss around military terminology or go off on prolonged philosophical rants about their motivations.
But students in German classes, even elementary-level classes, will understand most of the character exchanges and thus the general gist of the play. It is to the cast's credit that language in the play is often supplemented by gestures or intonation to help the audience realize what is going on. Classics students may be drawn to the theme of the play and its contrast to actual history, but of course they will face the problem of the language barrier.
I left the rehearsal with a few questions but with respect for the cast and their work this semester. They have memorized a four-act play in German and have put together an enjoyable performance under inexperienced direction. As with any original interpretation, the meanings of some aspects of the show are not obvious and may even be confusing. But German students and faculty will surely enjoy what this group has created from a simple classroom text.
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