| Choose your own 'Alma'-venture
By Michael Ordona How do you solve a problem like Alma? Both the woman, Alma Mahler-Werfel, and the mammoth, complex play about her life, "Alma," are confounding puzzles, loaded with contradictions but undeniably fascinating. Mahler-Werfel, an early 20th century beauty who bedeviled such major figures as painter Gustav Klimt, writer Franz Werfel and composer Gustav Mahler, was an anti-Semite who married two Jewish men. She surrendered her own musical aspirations to be Mahler's wife and mother to his children - and, according to the play, exacted her revenge via fiery infidelities - but at last, tenderly nursed him on his deathbed. Her story is one of compromise, repressed rage, self-absorption ... and passion, obsession and self-realization. "Alma," in its U.S. debut at the Los Angeles Theatre after an eight-year European run, is a brain-busting trip, a fractured memory play. Noted Israeli novelist Joshua Sobol has squeezed Mahler-Werfel's myriad entanglements into a sprawling 15-hour "polydrama" compressed even further into a mere 4.5-hour evening by splitting the story into five simultaneous narratives marked by heated arguments, desperate declarations of love and all-out brawls and crisscrossing different times in the protagonist's life. Audience members must choose which actors to follow from room to room in director Paulus Manker's innovative, energetic environmental staging, making it impossible to get the whole picture in one performance. Even doggedly tracking only one of the four actresses playing Alma takes the viewer on a twisting, time-jumping journey that often intersects with her other incarnations. In several scenes, her older and younger selves meet to dish the dirt on the men in their life or to rail against male tyranny. This approach creates obvious problems for audience members clumsily following actors around the labyrinthine reaches of the building (and onto a chartered bus for one sequence). More troublesome, though, is the emotional structure created by this pageant of biographical highlights. "Alma" often feels like a series of lengthy, verbose arguments - a range of peaks without valleys. But this is not as damning as it would be for a standard piece of theater.
This is a different kind of experience. The scenes in the kitchen are permeated with the rich aroma of an actual boiling soup. The expert sound design suddenly transports the audience to a busy German train station. A gourmet dinner in a ballroom during intermission helps create the play's world. After trying to stick to one Alma in the first act, this reviewer found it more rewarding in act two to take Sobol's advice and randomly switch between storylines. The effect is as if all time and memory in Mahler-Werfel's life exist simultaneously, with equal vigor. The cerebral drive and novelty of the staging, combined with the focus of a supremely committed cast, keep the experience energized. The actors contend with the obstacles of audience members unpredictably moving on their sets and unwieldy, exposition-laden language. They succeed to varying degrees. Magnus Stefansson brings a brainy swagger and powerful presence to his Gustav Mahler. His balance between cruelty and vulnerability drives act one's emotionally climactic kitchen scene, in which he confronts Alma and her lover, architect Walter Gropius. Ruben Garcia as Alexander Zemlinsky infuses his lusty entanglement with the youngest Alma with naive charm. Of the two Almas sampled by this reviewer, Ryan Templeton as the youngest version fares better than Flo Lawrence as the 125-year-old incarnation. Both women give their all, but the lack of modulation in their performances paints Alma's life as one long, screaming argument. While Templeton is less effective as her character ages, she does have the effervescence necessary to sell her as a youthful temptress. Director Manker seems to be the most comfortable actor in the cast. As loose cannon Oskar Kokoshka, he is by turns an amusing crank and a despicable woman-beater. His scenes have an infectious energy, although his stage combat looks scarily reckless. There's much more that could be said about "Alma": that it's a logistical marvel; an interesting lesson in perspective; an over-intellectualized bore; an impassioned labor of love; a muddled, exploitive mess; a philosophical examination of the sacrament - and sacrifice - of marriage with one of the longest curtain calls in history ... but it is, inarguably, a unique theatrical experience.
"Alma" runs Thursdays-Sundays through Dec. 5 at the Los Angeles Theatre, 615 S. Broadway. Tickets are $125 (includes drinks and a three-course gourmet dinner during the interval). Call (213) 688-2994 or go to http://www.alma-mahler.com.
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