The Demons In Our Midst

An old saying warns people "Better the devil you know than the one you don't." How that message manifests in our daily lives can vary tremendously. For the past few weeks, I've been dealing with a devil I know all too well: allergies. True to form, the usual signs and symptoms have been unmistakable: swollen sinuses and dry eyes (that spontaneously overcompensate by stimulating my tear ducts). This latest visit to "allergy hell" had another component: several weeks of compulsive coughing caused by a post-nasal drip that made me feel as if my abdominal muscles were determined to perform an aerobic workout I never wanted.

Though filmmaker Gus van Sant may have had his "own private Idaho," I've spent the past few weeks coping with the challenges of "my own private climate change crisis." While it has not been fun -- and has sometimes made it difficult to concentrate on what's happening on the stage (or screen) in front of me -- the situation has forced me to relax my usual desperate grasp on reality. Theatre critics often joke that their work is "a dark and dirty job, but someone's got to do it." Thankfully, sitting in a darkened theatre also cuts down on eye strain resulting from excessive glare.

That being said, it's been interesting to observe how two recent days of incessant coughing forced me to suspend my sense of disbelief and respond to dramatic experiences with as few critical filters as possible. In one case, the artistic director of a theatre company asked the audience to just sit back and let the experience wash over them. In the other, I found myself watching a 102-year-old silent film built around a tale as old as time.

Based on a classic German legend attributed to Johanna Georg Faust (1480-1540), the desire to remain forever youthful has made its presence felt in numerous formats. Many stories revolve around a so-called Faustian bargain in which a person sells his soul to the Devil (Charles Gounod's 1859 opera, Faust; Arrigo Boito's 1868 opera, Mefistofele; Ferruccio Busoni's 1925 opera, Doktor Faust; and 1955's hit musical, Damn Yankees). Others involve magic spells (Lerner & Loewe's 1947 musical, Brigadoon), mysterious secrets (Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel entitled The Picture of Dorian Gray), secret potions (1992's Death Becomes Her), and recipes that include fresh placenta (2004's Hong Kong horror film entitled Dumplings).

The famous Spanish conquistador and first Governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de León (1474-1521), was searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth when he landed on the shores of Florida in 1513. In Leoš Janácek’s 1926 opera, The Makropulos Affair (which is based on a 1922 play by Karel Čapek), the 337-year-old Emilia Marty is tired of living and no longer scared of dying. In 1985's Cocoon, members of a senior community in Florida receive an unexpected gift from space aliens who have strayed far from their course.

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One of the more fantastical presentations during the 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival was a screening of 1917's Rapsodia Satanica accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Nino Oxilia's female version of the Faust legend revolves around the aged Countess d’Oltrevita (Lyda Borelli) who, as she attends a social event, is introduced to a group of younger, more beautiful, and healthier well wishers. Reflecting on her former voluptuousness while walking past a series of paintings, she wishes she could regain the spirit, beauty, and physical pleasures of her youth. A fairly campy version of Mephisto (Ugo Bazzini) quickly materializes to make her wish come true with one caveat: the Countess is forbidden to fall in love again.

Poster art for Nino Oxilia's Rapsodia Satanica

Borelli's Countess obviously knows what she's getting into when she makes her pact with the devil. She has spent some time in her waning years and would prefer to be the center of attention again. When granted renewed beauty and vitality by Mephisto, she attracts the attention of two brothers -- Sergio (Giovanni Cini) and Tristano (Andrea Habay) -- who cause her to erupt in a flirtatious kind of emoting that makes one imagine the love child of Charles Ludlam and Charles Pierce with a strand of DNA from Bette Davis added to the genetic mix. As Alba vamps and dances with a bridal veil (her movements were choreographed by Loie Fuller, whose work inspired Isadora Duncan), she seems like a bel canto soprano rehearsing for her mad scene.

Lyda Borelli in a scene from 1917's Rapsodia Satanica

Borelli became the reigning diva of the Italian stage following the retirement of Eleonora Duse. Not only did she tour to theatres as far away as South America, she made a handful of silent films which defined the "Italian Diva" genre. After her final screen project in 1918, she married Count Vittorio Cini, who proceeded to buy up as many copies of her films as possible in order to destroy them and have her beauty all to himself.

Lydia Borelli (Alba) and Giovanni Cini (Sergio)
in a scene from 1917's Rapsodia Satanica

For a contemporary audience viewing Oxilia's film, Borelli's overacting is less impressive than the groundbreaking cinematic technology used in the film. As Margarita Landazuri explains in her program note:

"Rapsodia Satanica is a stunning example of 'added color' with its tinting and toning as well as select stencil-applied accents. Early filmmakers also tinkered with 'natural photography,' reproducing the world as seen by the human eye. The first successful natural color system, Kinemacolor, used red and green filters in both photographing and projecting to produce as full a spectrum as was possible at the time. When British producer Charles Urban's films first played in New York in 1900, Moving Picture World called them 'of the greatest possible importance in connection with moving picture progress.' In 1914, however, a lawsuit invalidated Urban's Kinemacolor patent and the process faded from the movies."

Watching Borelli's transformation from a restrained old woman into a lusty flirt reveals a formidable artist with a wide dramatic range (Borelli's voice was said to be her most famous asset). For some viewers, Borelli's histrionics may invoke memories of Gloria Swanson's final scene in 1950's Sunset Boulevard. However, having seen lots of operatic mad scenes in my time, her technique did not seem so out of place to me. Instead, it felt like an opportunity to witness a relic from another era.

Andrea Habay (Tristano) and Lyda Borelli (Alba)
in a scene from 1917's Rapsodica Satanica

The stenciling techniques used in the film were fascinating -- especially the way in which Borelli was the only woman whose costumes appeared in color. Mephisto's exaggerated facial features (including eyebrows that looked like large worms) were a delight to behold. Thankfully, the restored print only runs about 45 minutes and can be viewed in the following video from YouTube:

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First published in 1992, Toni Morrison's novel, Jazz, is the second installment in her Beloved trilogy. Marin Theatre Company is currently presenting a stage adaptation of Morrison's novel by Nambi E. Kelley (which received its world premiere from the Baltimore Center Stage in May of 2017). Directed by Awoye Timpo (with choreography by Joanna Haigood), the production features music by Marcus Shelby, a highly effective unit set by Kimie Nishikawa, and some exceptional lighting by Jeff Rowlings.

Set in 1926, the action takes place in Vesper County, Virginia and Harlem as a door-to-door cosmetics salesman named Joe Trace (Michael Gene Sullivan) and his wife, Violet (C. Kelly Wright), try to reinvent their lives after Joe's love triangle comes to a tragic end. Though he loved his wife, Joe was also having an affair with a young woman named Dorcas (Dezi Solèy). After three months, Dorcas decided to pull the plug on their relationship -- a move that led to her untimely death.

C. Kelly Wright (Country Violet) and Margo Hall
(True Belle) in a scene from Jazz (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

When the distressed Violet shows up at the young woman's funeral, she manages to mutilate the corpse with a knife. Dazed and confused, Violet subsequently shows up at the home of Dorcas's aunt, Alice Manford (Margo Hall), struggling to articulate her needs and feelings but barely able to communicate her thoughts.

Margo Hall and Tiffany Tenille as townsfolk attending
the funeral for Dorcas in a scene from Jazz
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Other members of the cast include Tiffany Tenille as Felice, a cigarette girl, and Wild's shadow; Paige Mayes as a parrot and a 19th-century mixed-race man known as "Golden Gray," and Lisa Lacy doubling as Malvone and one of Vesper County's local gossips. Dane Troy appears as Henry Levoy and several other minor characters; Margo Hall doubles as Aunt Alice and a character named True Belle.

C. Kelley Wright (Violet), Paige Mayes (Parrot), and
Michael Gene Sullivan (Joe) in a scene from Jazz
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Throughout history, folks have tried to blame their misfortunes on other people or forces beyond their control. Ancient civilizations attributed bad luck to the Gods, Fate, or hideous monsters. For thousands of years, "the Jews" have been scapegoated as the cause of much grief. In the past half century, "the Gays" have been accused of ruining financial markets, manipulating weather systems, and having all kinds of other ridiculous powers.

While the Devil has been a steady figure in Western literature, the characters in Jazz point to a more insidious culprit as the cause of their woes: the corrupting influence of new music (an accusation also leveled at rock 'n roll, rap, and hip hop music). In Morrison’s eyes, “Jazz was considered (as all new music is) to be devil music, too sensual and provocative, and so on. But for some black people, blues and jazz represented ownership of one’s own emotions. So, of course, it is excessive and overdone.”

Countryfolk (Lisa Lacy and Tiffany Tenille) arrive in
Harlem in a scene from Jazz (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Angela Davis further explains that “Blues women openly challenged the gender politics implicit in traditional cultural representations of marriage and heterosexual love relationships. They forged and memorialized images of tough, resilient, and independent women who were afraid neither of their own vulnerability nor of defending their right to be respected as autonomous human beings.” In her program note entitled “Blues Women,” co-dramaturg Arminda Thomas writes:

“One reason for the allure of the Classic Blues Woman (particularly for young black women of the era) is that it marked their first encounter with self-representation in popular culture. For nearly a century, the prevailing characterizations of African American women had come from the minstrel show and its successors. These figures fell into three basic categories: happy, asexual-but-nurturing Mammy; hypersexual, promiscuous Jezebel; or Topsy, the unkempt, clownish picaninny. Jazz music provides the structure of Toni Morrison’s novel, but its heart is in the blues -- particularly in the female-centered classic blues era. This period began in 1920 with Mamie Smith’s surprise hit, ‘Crazy Blues,’ and dominated the record industry until the onset of the Great Depression.”

“Blues music may or may not lead people to 'do unwise and disorderly things' (as one of Morrison’s characters opines), but it definitely arouses powerful emotional responses, particularly in the women of Jazz. Alice Manfred, for instance, finds the music so troubling that she prefers to 'suffer the summer heat' rather than have its sounds waft in through her apartment's open windows. Her niece, Dorcas (the book’s quintessential child of the blues age), is so steeped in the ethos of the era that she not only speaks and thinks in lyrics, but is seemingly content for her life to play out as one of those dramatic songs.”

Margo Hall (Aunt Alice) and Dezi Solèy (Dorcas)
in a scene from Jazz (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Because Kelley's adaptation does not follow a strictly linear narrative (often ricocheting between memories and the present time), it's easy for the audience to be confused. The staging includes two radically different interpretations (from the husband's and wife's perspectives) of why Violet induced a miscarriage while riding aboard a train to New York (Castor oil was often used to help a woman miscarry an unwanted pregnancy). Audiences may not be aware that the way Dorcas is often seen (framed behind a scrim) is inspired by a picture from The Harlem Book of the Dead (a collection of funeral photographs by James Van Der Zee).

Paige Mayes (Parrot) and Dezi Solèy (Dorcas)
in a scene from Jazz (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Throughout the production, the audience experiences some beautiful ensemble work. As Kelley's script depicts women of different generations sharing acquired survival skills and their hard-learned wisdom about how to deal with the fickleness of men, Paige Mayes and Dezi Solèy breathe life into the more mysterious characters in Morrison's novel while Tiffany Tenille and Lisa Lacy take on a variety of supporting roles.

Dezi Solèy (Dorcas) and Tiffany Tenille (Felice)
in a scene from Jazz (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Much of the heavy dramatic lifting rests on the sturdy shoulders of C. Kelly Wright and Margo Hall, who embody the passion, rage, quiet intelligence, and biting wit of older generations of black women. The only two men in the cast are Michael Gene Sullivan (Joe Trace) and Dane Troy (whose characters obviously enjoy more freedom than the woman in their lives). Performances of Jazz continue through May 19 at Marin Theatre Company (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer: