Austrian sculptor turned playwright Werner Schwab, who died of alcohol poisoning on New Year’s Eve 1993 at the age of 35, penned more than a dozen plays like People Annihilation or My Liver Is Senseless. These plotless, antisocial works are the type of theater that typically drives audiences away: the stories abound in rape, murder, incest, scatology, and general contempt for humanity. But for Trap Door Theatre to lose three patrons—roughly 10 percent of the crowd on opening night, when the house was padded with friends, family, and other supporters—is exceptional. Clearly director Tracy Letts is doing something right.
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Schwab was an underground sensation in Austria and Germany in the early 90s. But his work is nearly unknown in America—this is the North American premiere of People Annihilation and, as far as I can tell, only the second production of his work in this country. That’s hardly surprising, however, given Schwab’s eagerness to defy bourgeois theatrical expectations. Like Jarry, Artaud, and Witkiewicz before him, Schwab turns theater into a social irritant by using heightened, fractured language and repulsive characters. Sticking with this play to the final curtain, even in a production as smart, colorful, and funny as this one, was an ordeal at times.
Letts’s tight production has a nearly farcical tone, although it’s a vicious kind of farce that doesn’t whitewash the play. The actors nail Schwab’s characters, who churn like maniacs trying to stay on good behavior. Though Schwab’s stage directions call for effusive emotional extremes again and again, this production’s restraint serves the script’s rank humor. So do the cast’s razor-sharp, grotesque characterizations, from Marzena Bukowska’s shriveled, gnawing Mrs. Wurm to Nicole Wiesner’s imperturbable, foghorn-voiced Mrs. Kovacic to Beata Pilch’s unctuous Mrs. Grollfeuer.
Where: Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland
