Shelved
Sometimes Moscow and San Francisco are closer than they seem.
THIS IS MY COPY of “War and Peace.” Normally it lives on a top shelf of the library wall in the dining room, with a bookmark on Page 18, where I left it decades ago. (Yes, this shelf does suggest eclectic literary tastes. That's why comments are never activated here.)
If I remember correctly, I was tripped up by the same thing in Mr. Tolstoy's text as many Anglophones are: those Russian names. Until recently, I didn't understand that just as Richard is sometimes Dick and Robert is sometimes Bob, Constantine is sometimes Kostya. I may try the book again. Years of Chekhov (and having a friend named Constantine) may have made me more literate.
The first thing they ask you at "Gob Squad War and Peace" is whether you've read the book. Looking around the auditorium at NYU Skirball, it was clear: I am not alone.
This is a picture from “Gob Squad: War and Peace.”
Oh, Grate
Gob Squad's "War and Peace" includes an hommage to "The Seven-Year Itch."
If this swirling-white-skirt image reminds you just the tiniest bit of Marilyn Monroe's sexy subway-grate scene from the 1955 movie "The Seven-Year Itch," that is entirely intentional. Other famous figures depicted onstage include Lenin, Nelson Mandela, Leo Tolstoy, Napoleon Bonaparte, a certain Mr. Trump and Emma Gonzalez (the Parkland, Fla., high school student who was so eloquent at March for Our Lives). The show would be in our Off Broadway listings, but it ran only three nights (March 29-31), as traveling international avant-garde productions sometimes do.
Frozen
Simon Will onstage in "War and Peace."
In her New York Times review, Laura Collins-Hughes described the performance as "a kind of salon hosted by a personable cast" and marveled at just how timely its topics were, even if she felt it needed more urgency. When the Russian-costumed performers sit down at the dining table, they're joined by a few audience members. "It’s the sort of guided randomness that Gob Squad loves," Collins-Hughes observed. "Potentially uncomfortable engagement with one’s fellow human beings."
1 Shade of Beige
From left, Sarah Thom, Sean Patten and Bastian Trost. Costumes by Ingken Benesch.
In general, I consider audience participation in the theater an abomination (unless it's Dame Edna just calling out snarky remarks, insulting people's clothes). I'd rather look at the pretty people onstage in their glamorous costumes. In this production, the period fashions are beautifully color-coordinated and sometimes quite skimpy. The men often wear only ballet tights from the waist down.
Dance!
Eefen the audience participation is beauty-full. Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming.
But the audience participation thing can work. The first time I saw the deliciously nasty 1998 revival of "Cabaret," Alan Cumming invited a distinguished-looking older gentleman onstage to dance. Being a furrener, fairly new in this country at the time, Cumming appeared not to realize he was partnering Walter Cronkite.
And there on that Friday night, at "War and Peace," was a communicator of near-equal stature. Lizz Winstead, co-creator of "The Daily Show," inspired leader of Lady Parts Justice League and treasured Facebook friend. Which was a delight, because I worship her.
On the plus side, audience participation can be a morale booster, reminding you that terribly important people chose to spend their evening exactly the same way you did. (At "War and Peace," I also ran into Scott Heller, The Times's theater editor. The only time I ever spoke to Gloria Steinem was on the escalator at the Laura Pels.)
We Happy Few
Current members of Gob Squad.
Since it's too late for you to see this "War and Peace" -- although you could catch the company's "Creation (Pictures of Dorian)" in London, Berlin, Brighton or Leipzig in May or June -- what you really need to know about is the Gob Squad Arts Collective itself. Because these people will be back.
This strange and wondrous seven-member troupe sprang up in Nottingham, England, in 1994, when a couple of members were in college there. They wanted to attend the Glastonbury Festival and had heard that if you presented a play yourself, you got free tickets. So they did.
At least that's the way Sean Patten tells this tale of noble motives. Patten also explains why the company uses so much video in their stagings. "Film and TV is the main cultural language of our times," he said. Everybody speaks it.
The company is now pretty much based in Berlin, with a combination of British and German performers collaborating. They claim that no particular theme is part of their mission, but on their website, Sarah Thom does acknowledge that certain topics keep coming up, among them "mortality, immortality and loneliness."
Beard
Bastian Trost as Leo Tolstoy.