San Diego Arts

"Seven Crimes" - Grand Guignol at Sledgehammer

"There's a little death in every body."
By George  Weinberg-Harter
Posted on Tue, Oct 2nd, 2007
Last updated Tue, Oct 2nd, 2007

The troupe of the 293-seat theatre that opened in Paris in 1894 did not invent the genre of gruesome and bloody drama. But their name – Grand Guignol (meaning something like "big puppet show") – has adhered to that product, even though the original company ceased operations in 1962.

Grisly shows have been going in and out of style since ancient Greek and Roman times if not earlier. Even Shakespeare tried his hand at it, depicting a nice selection of heinous barbarities in "Titus Andronicus." Although officialdom is often censorial of it, this lurid material can be boffo box office whenever managements are allowed to give the public what it truly wants: sex and violence.

France’s Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol hit its heyday of popularity in the 1920s and -30s. The management blamed the real horrors of the Second World War for eventually undermining the public’s taste for make-believe atrocities. But it seems more reasonable for movies to take the rap. The murder, mayhem, torture, dismemberment, evisceration, and occasional eye-gouging that were the Grand-Guignol’s stock in trade can now be enjoyed, along with popcorn and the giant soda of your choice, in any typical offering of films now showing at the nearest multiplex. Or get DVDs and watch the stuff at home.

But for a delightfully nostalgic and blood-drenched stroll down theatre history’s memory lane, Sledgehammer is offering, as a Halloween treat, three Grand-Guignol scripts, translated and adapted by David Rosenthal, and directed by Sledgehammer’s own avid advocate of theatrical extremities, Scott Feldsher.

That little old Parisian theatre staged hundreds of such playlets during its seven decades. (Lists of most of them may be perused at http://www.grandguignol.com/plays.htm .) As was also the practice back then, Sledgehammer offers an evening of three of these one-acts – although what the original French titles were and who their authors may have been is not here revealed.

Sledgehammer’s trilogy is delectably woven together by a Mistress of Ceremonies – Mei Ling Downey, clad provocatively and wielding the whip of the dominatrix. After running the audience through a few disciplinary paces, she offers prologues to the proceedings in cabaret-style song that threads through entr’actes and provides a jolly tutti finale too. Mme. Downey also happily materializes again from time to time in minor roles, always clothed much the same, with just the incongruous addition of characteristic little accessories, such as a saucy maid’s apron or a jauntily worn policeman’s cap.

The three plays themselves present an intriguing blend of styles. Although the first two are supposed to be transposed into more recent times and local climes, the costumes (by Mary Larson), settings (by Nicole Black), and properties are something of a divertingly anachronistic melange, often harking back over the past hundred years to the periods of Grand-Guignol’s inauguration and zenith. Black’s scenic design, however, partakes more of the jagged and out-of-plumb angles of the Expressionistic German cinema than of the French Naturalism from which Grand Guignol sprang. This basic set is imaginatively reconfigured and dressed differently for each little play.

"The Awful Pleasure," with a doomed adulterous couple, a paralyzed and murdered husband, and a guilt-ridden spectral vengeance, seems like a rehashing of some familiar 19^th century literary elements – most notably those of Zola’s "Thérèse Raquin." Nominally setting it in what we are told is present day San Diego in no way effaces these recognizably and thoroughly enjoyable Gallic elements. And foremost amongst this play’s pleasures is the performance of Janel DeGuzman as a lustful uxoricidal Mexican spitfire coiffed in the fashion of Frida Kahlo.

The central play, itself called "Seven Crimes," takes place inside a barbershop in, of all places, Barstow, on the Fourth of July during (for some reason) the year 1969. (One supposes that the original script might have been set in some French provincial town on le quatorze julliet.) The echoes here are, predictably, of "Sweeney Todd," with not just one but a duo of deranged barbers bent on godawful revenge with razors. "The lottery of death has brought all my wife’s ex-lovers to me!" the premier madman crows. The shrieks of the victim, bound in a barber chair, are to be masked by the celebratory fireworks detonations. Amongst the characters are also a customer costumed as Uncle Sam and a woman as the Statue of Liberty (who possibly could have been a straightforward Mlle. Liberté orginally).

But the pièce de résistance, given pride of place after intermission, is "The Terrible Experiment" (the title alone provoking anticipatory goosebumps). This pseudo-scientific claptrap is the old tale of the reanimator recooked – an idea that goes back as far Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" and further. This one is authentically set in period France – over a century ago – where a bereaved father attempts to revive his dead daughter by means of a flashing electrical contraption – with disastrous lack of success. It is played with perhaps some greater degree of heightened melodramatic sincerity than the previous two pieces, which often go deliberately over the top into the realm of the grotesquely comic. But who is to say that this approach lacks authenticity? According to contemporary accounts, even the modish crowds who frequented the Grand-Guignol in the years between the wars may have found a campy hilarity commingled with the creepiness of the shows, an unintended effect much strayed from their roots in 19^th century Naturalism and earnest melodrama.

As the griefstricken Dr. Charrier, Walter Ritter certainly displays believable anguish for as much as he is worth. But when in the extremity of his sorrow the doctor hurls himself across the supine cadaver of his girl and both judder and flop like fish in the electrical current, the audience may be forgiven for finding some appalling humor amidst the horror, not to mention more than a hint of indecency.

The players are reincarnated in each of the plays. Ritter reappears as the clueless red-white-and-blue yokel in the Barstow barbershop, and as a more sinister medico in "The Awful Pleasure." Perhaps less varied but ever relishable is Stanley Madruga as a succession of hectically intense types. The supreme impression that Madruga gives (here and elsewhere where we have also previously seen him play roles of brilliant eccentricity) is one of an intellectually charged near- or full-lunacy rendered with high style and delicious mannered precision. His supreme moment in "Seven Crimes" is, of course, as the obsessed Boss barber.

Mike Oravec also seems to possess a speciality, that of vividly portraying species of nervous hysteria, which serves him very well as the hapless captive of the insane barbers and as the horrified husband of the unsuccessfully reanimated corpse. He is, however, understandably offered little opportunity to display such range in the role of the first play’s totally paralyzed Sombreuse.

Dana Hooley also nicely distinguishes the generally macabre types of her bit roles. And John Polak creates such differences between his portrayals (from maddened lover to oafish assistant barbershop lunatic to grim executioner) that he might scarcely be recognizable from play to play without consultation of the program.

Scott Feldsher’s directorial approach proves more audience-friendly here than in some previous Sledgehammer efforts – such as a Strindberg "Ghost Sonata" where the audience was required to crouch on the stage while the players performed in the house, and an excruciatingly elongated Büchner "Leonce and Lena." This is appropriate for a show which Sledgehammer Theatre hopes to revive as a regular seasonal attraction. Certainly the sung interludes are among the most attractive elements, composed by sound designer Pea Hicks, sung by Downey, and accompanied by one-man band and sound-effects artist Scott Paulson on toy piano, Theramin, bass saxophone, tamboura, harp, and the Lord knows what else. The music, when it occurs, lends a kind of happy "Rocky Horror Show" ambience to the work. Perhaps, in years to come, more vocal numbers could be added, eventually turning the piece into a proper musical play.

CLICK HERE FOR PROGRAM PAGE ONE

CLICK HERE FOR PROGRAM PAGE TWO

Venue :Tenth Avenue Theatre, 930 Tenth Avenue, San Diego 92101

Dates	:	Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 7 pm (with two special late shows and one matinee) through November 4th.
Organization	:	Sledgehammer Theatre
Phone	:	(619) 544-1484
Production Type	:	Play
Region	:	Downtown San Diego
URL	:	www.sledgehammer.org

About the author: George Weinberg-Harter George Weinberg-Harter has been active in San Diego theatre since childhood, appearing in many local stage productions as well as doing graphic art for them. He has helped start theatre companies, authored and co-authored a number of plays produced locally and is a co-founder of the Fellow Calligraphers of San Diego. He is a member of the Actors Alliance of San Diego, the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, and the San Diego Press Club, which has presented him with its 2007 First Place Excellence in Journalism Award for Drawing or Illustration.
More by this author.

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