The Europeans struggles to impress

Author: Michael Nevadomski

Last week, staff writer Dana Walters provided a perhaps overly laudatory "sneak peek" into this weekend's production of "The Europeans," one of Howard Barker's infamously difficult "theater of catastrophe" pieces. First produced in 1990 by Barker's own company, "the Wrestling School," this much-anticipated production marks the close of Middlebury College's theatrical year and the latest piece directed by Professor of Theatre Richard Romagnoli.

Romagnoli has described Barker's plays as "difficult," but this simple adjective barely scratches the surface. Tormented characters give long speeches that externalize their innermost thoughts; history is appropriated, manipulated and made aware of itself. These ideas sound like good theater, but the reality is very different. Barker's script waxes preachy and pseudo-poetic, offering the illusion of erudition, but failing to deliver on the high themes it claims to explore. I found "The Europeans" to be poorly crafted on a textual level: pretentious, oblique and narcissistic in its self-awareness. As a result, I am inclined to believe that the otherwise talented cast was robbed of their performances by the script, which functioned less as a pretext for the actor's craft and more like a loudspeaker for the playwright's own personal dogmas. In short, this was a textually crippled play.

Beyond the text, the greatest detriment to this show was what seemed to be the lack of unified direction. According to the director's notes, the subtitle "Struggles to Love" implies that "this play is about characters' relationships with one another [sic], themselves, and with the prevailing political regime," yet this was not visible in any respect. While each actor projected his or her own viable "character," there seemed to be no dramatic cohesion among them - they might as well have been different characters from different plays on stage at the same time.

Though some might argue this method points to the characters' solipsism, "The Europeans" lacked the precision and depth I've come to expect from Romagnoli's work and reputation as a director, relying instead on droning background mood music or actors slithering onstage in the dark, allowing the play to descend into the clich