"Ajax' (2nd review) and "Heart of a Revolution'

Did you know that the German philosopher Karl Marx was an egocentric womanizer? Or that the ancient Greek warrior Ajax was a delusional maniac?

Tucked away in pockets of this year's FringeArts Festival are gems of historical and literary discovery. Stray off the beaten path, and you're bound to find something new.

I don't know about you, but I had no idea about the intimate details of Karl Marx's domestic life. But thanks to playwright Sonya Aronowitz's in-depth research, you can get a juicy insider view of Marx's relationship with his family and friends. It's not very flattering to Marx, but it certainly makes for fascinating theater.

In-house affair

Aronowitz's compelling new bioplay, Heart of the Revolution, focuses on Marx's domestic life between September 1850 and May 1851. Not coincidentally, that's a nine-month span, and there's plenty of gestation going on, more than there should be in a monogamous household— and I don't mean gestation of manifestoes.

Many a public figure today is vilified for having an affair with the au pair "“ and evidently, Marx was guilty of the same cliché offense. As Aronowitz's taut domestic drama reveals, Marx had a stable home life, thanks to his devoted wife Jenny, who treated him like "the great philosopher" and indulged his single-minded dedication to his theories and writings. She organized the household around him, so that his every need was met and he and his collaborator Friedrich Engels could work without interruption.

At the same time, Jenny is the classic "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" wife (translation: children, kitchen, church). She's preoccupied with raising kids, but several of them die tragically, so she keeps getting pregnant to replace them.

Marxian theory and practice

While Jenny is distracted, Marx's head is turned by Lenchen, the pretty nanny. Lenchen is steadfastly loyal to her mistress, and vigorously resists her master's passionate pursuit. But eventually, she gives in, and at the end of Act I, Lenchen, like her mistress, is also pregnant by Marx.

Act II delivers on this highly charged situation with the power of an Ibsen drama. Jenny discovers Lenchen's pregnancy. Heartbroken by the deception as well exhausted by her pregnancies and losses, Jenny sinks ever deeper into depression and madness.

In his writings, Marx dreams of a post-capitalist society of familial communism. But practicing what he preaches doesn't work for him, so Marx seeks a solution to the domestic crisis that threatens to tarnish his reputation. He blackmails his loyal collaborator, Engels, threatening to expose Engels's secret if Engels doesn't claim fatherhood of Lenchen's child.

"'A dangerous man'

This "secret"— namely, Engels's own amorous infatuation with Marx— is a creation of the playwright's own imagination, by her own admission. I don't know how you feel about playwrights taking historical liberties, but I must say that in the case of Heart of the Revolution, her bold choice pays off, providing the play with a powerful dramatic reversal and denouement.

(Ironic historical footnote: Marx and Lenchen's son was put into a foster home. Jenny permitted the boy to visit his step-brothers and -sisters, provided he enter the Marx home through the servants' quarters. Lenchen, ever loyal to Jenny, remained housekeeper to the Marx family. After Marx and Jenny's death, she served as housekeeper to Engels.)

"Marx was a dangerous man," Aronowitz contended in a conversation following the performance. "He was obsessed with how perfect his ideas were. He saw the world in black and white." As groundbreaking as his theories may have been, the playwright went on to say, they didn't allow "life to seep in between the cracks."

You might say that Aronowitz herself flirts with danger in combining a well-researched plot with historical fabrication. I say: If she can get away with it, more dramatic power to her.

Homicidal maniac

Another dangerous man is afoot in the FringeArts Festival this fall. That's Ajax, Greek warrior extraordinaire, who's butchering up a storm over at the Wilma in the Athens-based Attis Theatre's production of Ajax, the madness.

The production's relentless ferocity sent me back to my mythology books to find what I'd overlooked. I remember Ajax as one of the dramatis personae of the Trojan War, but I had no idea what a homicidal maniac he was, or what the strange nature of his blood-lusting delusions were.

Director Theodoros Terzopoulos has created what he calls a "scenic composition" based on Sophocles's ancient tragedy, Ajax. Three nearly naked actors bend over what looks like a series of troughs painted grey on the outside and blood red on the inside. (Are they sheep or are they men?) They're laughing at the onset of the play, and they continue to laugh violently, hysterically, relentlessly, for the first 15 minutes of this hour-long theatrical étude.

Animals as enemies

It's a horrifying spectacle to watch (and it must be equally horrifying to perform), as the actors' bodies convulse and writhe in a paroxysm of non-stop laughter, their torsos gleaming, their saliva dripping into the troughs. At times the laughter turns to a grotesque howl, or a roar, or a sob; and finally, mercifully, it subsides after an agonizing quarter of an hour.

There isn't much of a mise-en-scène. The troughs are part of a series that line the stage vertically and horizontally, in the shape of a cross. Nor is there a linear plot. When there is narrative, the actors repeat, in ritualistic fashion, a description of Ajax in an orgy of murder. (The lines are projected in translation on supertitles above the set.)

Intent on murdering the Trojans to the point of frenzy, Ajax mistakes animals for his enemies, herding them, torturing them, slaying them. This horrific account is repeated over and over, shouted out by these three resilient performers.

Toward the end of this ritualistic study, the actors seize several pairs of high-heeled red shoes (do they represent women who are also killed in the frenzy?), while sounds of airplanes fly overhead.

Syria and Vietnam

The literary historian George Steiner wrote that all tragedy— ancient and modern— is based on three crucial elements: myth, ritual and symbol. Terzopoulos has understood that theory very well and put all three to full use, without worrying about Aristotelian plot and narrative.

Ajax: the madness is a challenging theater experience. It's a visual, visceral, experimental study of the madness of war "“ the kind I find best to sit back and take as it comes. Doing so, I couldn't help but conjure up in my mind all the horrific images of war and violence projected by our mass media, from the gas victims in Syria this past week to the helpless civilian victims of the Vietnam War.

Clearly, Terzopoulos and his brave cast are provoking us to a place beyond revulsion and horror— or, in the playwright Peter Handke's phrase, "beyond sorrow"— where we can see the parallels between ancient atrocities and modern ones.

Toward the end, one of the actors cries out in Greek: "I'm afraid, I'm afraid of what's to come…" So were those of us who saw that performance last Saturday night.♦


To read another review of Ajax, the madness by Robert Zaller, click here.