Review: METHUSALEM OR THE ETERNAL BOURGEOIS at The Actors' Gang

Methusalem or The Eternal Bourgeois at The Actors' Gang in Culver City is a rare performance of absurdist theatre, originally produced in the 1920s in Germany. It is decadent, angry, political, vulgar, deconstructionist, and at times, poetic. A surreal satire with brushes of Dada, Expressionism, and Marxism, this is the kind of production that is almost, by design, impossible to describe. Directed with panache by Brett Hinkley, it is more of a mixed media art experience than a conventional play. Perhaps the best way to capture some of the spirit of this happening is by the epithet on the Instagram poster, “don’t” (wink-wink) come stoned. The packed house on the night I attended soaked up and loved every minute of it.

Methusalem or The Eternal Bourgeois mixes in proletariat shoe factory revolts with family meltdowns over an unplanned pregnancy, talking bear rugs, the arguments of a student’s personified Id, Superego, and Ego, glamorous parties, hallucinatory black and white films, hysteria over how the goulash is coming along, group masturbation over newspaper reports of violent murder, and the longest monologue of literal flatulence I have ever witnessed.

Beyond even a political or social satire, Methusalem moves into some kind of uncharted meta territory, deconstructing the entire human project as absurd and diseased. All throughout this production, there is a sense of a world teetering and faltering on its axis, of everyone marching and dancing pointlessly towards gleeful and total destruction. In retrospect, this 1922 play looks eerily prophetic. The feeling of overwhelming dread, mute horror, obscenity, violence, and nihilism seem like a trippy premonition of the total global conflagration of World War II and the horrors of the holocaust to come.

The playwright Yvan Goll was born in 1891 in the Alsace-Lorraine region bordering France and Germany. He described himself as "Jewish by destiny, French-born by chance, and designated German by a stamped piece of paper." Goll was a poet and a continual political refugee throughout his life, first fleeing German conscription into the first World War and later fleeing the Nazis. Many theatregoers point of reference for l'entre-deux-guerres, interwar period in this part of Europe might be the classic musical Cabaret. Ultimately inspired by the 1939 Christopher Isherwood book Goodbye to Berlin, Cabaret is a dark musical exploring the late-stage hedonism of the crumbling Weimar Republic, poverty, abortion, antisemitism and the rise of fascism. Yet in comparison with Methusalem, Cabaret looks like a rosy, wide-eyed and cheerful romp.

For content warnings, see above. Methusalem has some ugly moments of sexism and a leering, jokey attitude towards predatory behavior, which might seem in some ways, with the entire end of civilization on display here, like a minor quibble, but then I observed how enthusiastically the audience received it. I note this, while simultaneously hating how vogueish censorship and overt politicizing threaten appreciation of classic works from all angles. It is simply hard for me to avoid feeling a bit queasy watching some of this onstage. But I’m clearly in the irrelevant minority here. The flatulence monologue likewise left me rather unmoved, but the audience was in absolute stitches and gave it a spontaneous ovation.

Methusalem has one of the most engaged and enthusiastic audiences I’ve seen in a smaller theatre recently. There is a spirited fan base for this show that is looking for a more feral, more political, more anarchic alternative to traditional drama and is delighted to found it.

Methusalem or The Eternal Bourgeois features a robust ensemble of actors, who bravely do all kinds of bizarre things onstage, and I commend them. Performances can vary from strident speechifying, to cartoonish posturing, to movingly realistic scenes, but it’s hard to imagine how else to deliver some of this impossible dialogue. Several actors stand out from the ensemble. Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer is an impressive talent. Her gorgeous lyricism, fluid physicality, and grounded emotiveness are utterly compelling as Ida, the rebellious, romantic daughter of the titular rich shoe baron Methusalem. Actor Pierre Adeli brings delicious playfulness, impeccable comedic timing, and ferocious character realism to his part of Felix, the shoe baron’s stock-market-quoting son. His perfectly calibrated, impassive delivery of the line “I do believe we are about to come into some money” at the sight of his father’s corpse made the entire play for me. It’s brilliant.

Some of Methusalem’s sketches and vignettes succeed better than others, but all of them are lavished with spectacularly striking design. This avant-garde production is visually thrilling from first to last, innovative and art-like. You could freeze frames of Methusalem and fill an entire gallery with them.  While I am not personally convinced that freeing theatre from the confines of traditional narrative does anything to elevate the ancient art of playwriting, it is clearly liberating for the art design, which here is bold, dexterous, and exquisite. There is stunning use of black and white and mixed media, with incredible, delicate, unnerving projection illustrations by Elif Sezgin. Then there is the extraordinarily creative, striking set and props by Chris Bell. Anyone with an interest in the visual arts would enjoy this production purely for how incredible it looks and sounds, with superb sound and music design by David Robbins. Methusalem or The Eternal Bourgeois is as hallucinatory as it is astoundingly visual and provocative.

Photos by Ashley Randall Photography

Methusalem or The Eternal Bourgeois runs at The Actors' Gang through December 16th. The Actors' Gang is located at 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. You can get tickets by calling 310-838-4264 or by clicking the link below:

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