The Danube by Maria Irene Fornes REVIEW 29 Jan 1994

At La Mama till Sun Feb 13, 1994

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

This review was published in Melbourne Times after Jan 29, 1994.

 

Maria Irene Fornes' play, The Danube, like the river itself, resonates with romantic, emotional and political images. The narrative is skeletal. Paul, an American soldier in Budapest, marries Eve, a young Hungarian student. They become ill. They must leave. But it is the structure, form and the allegorical references rather than the story which are the important components of this play.

 

Scenes are composed as taped language lessons in Hungarian. The characters communicate in the clipped, simple sentences of the language novice as a voice-over translates to and from Hungarian. It has the peculiar and dramatic effect of dislocating the speakers from their thoughts and detaching dialogue from the often passionately expressed emotions.

 

Some scenes remain untranslated but the formal verbal style of question and answer, repetition and information-giving remains. It makes seemingly banal conversations about ordering food, seeing the doctor, going to the movies, seem strange and absurd. This is accentuated by the brisk, concise movement of Wendy Joseph's direction.

 

There is an underlying sense of tragedy in the tale of these eccentric characters. Hungary is described as heavy and dark, America as light and bright. Paul (Nick Crawford-Smith) and Eve (Trina Tonkin) become ill and polluted like the river, like the politics. They are symptoms of an inexorable cultural degeneration. They are trapped in the thrall of the Danube and Budapest.

 

All performances are impressive. Crawford-Smith is magnetic as Paul the GI and Robert Lyon as Eve's eccentric father, is charming. It is strong ensemble work with Stephen Smith playing a bevy of quirky Hungarians. Joseph's direction takes risks which have largely been successful. At times, however, the set changes between such short scenes became unnecessarily laborious, and briefly the persistent translation became tiresome.

 

This is an intelligent, dense and poetic piece of writing which makes a powerful night in the theatre at La Mama.

 

 

KATE HERBERT  29.1.94        310 wd.