Jiri Zizka and Wilma's "Ying Tong'

Great suffering = great art?
Probing the mind of Jiri Zizka

JIM RUTTER

Nietzsche once remarked that Shakespeare “must have suffered greatly to have such passion for playing the fool.” He could have said the same about playwright Roy Smiles’s depiction of Spike Milligan (David Beach), the comic genius behind the BBC’s The Goon Show.

Smiles’s biopic Ying Tong, A Walk with the Goons, shows episodes in Milligan’s life in which, through nearly a decade of groundbreaking creative output (1951-1960), Milligan’s wracked psyche broke under the strain of his overworked creativity and the cast members who depended on him for their continued success. The most notable comparison— the aristocratic, spoiled-bratishness of Peter Sellers (Steven Beckingham), here represents the ungrateful foil stealing the limelight while Milligan endures a psychological meltdown that leaves him institutionalized and suicidal before rendering him a broken man requiring years to recover.

The play’s timeless theme—that an artist must suffer in order to produce great work— serves as one easily recognizable example of a more general philosophical concept: the Buddhist notion that suffering is born from desire, and the only way to eliminate the former is to eliminate the latter. Philosophically, as Nietzsche (among others) conceptualized it, this concept of “dependent arising” states that every concept defines, generates and reinforces its opposite: good and evil, virtue and vice, intelligence and stupidity, to suffering and happiness.

It’s also an idea that’s undergirded three of the last four plays directed by Jiri Zizka at the Wilma Theatre. He kicked off the 2006 season with Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, which contrasted the parentally supportive atmosphere that encouraged the rebellious writer Katurian’s creativity against his periodic exposure to a brother forced to suffer to an equal degree in torturous captivity. In this season’s opener, Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, Zizka brilliantly recreated the background of personal poverty and professional hostility in which Mozart’s musical genius was forced to flourish.

Simplistic demons from World War II

While Pillowman provides the most obvious statement of dependent arising, Zizka’s direction and Beach’s performance bring out the same concept in the much more loosely organized plot of Ying Tong. Bound in a straitjacket, Milligan suffers hallucinations, contemplating suicide and nearly committing murder, all before the start of a second act in which he must expurgate the demons of these “Goon Show” characters in order to confront the suffering that gave rise to them in his art.

Which, for playwright Smiles, boils down to a simplistic answer: Milligan’s traumatic World War II combat experiences in North Africa and Italy, which culminated in a commanding officer’s dismissive insistence that Milligan, after 72 hours of straight duty, must nonetheless deliver ammunition to a fiercely contested hill. Wounded on this mission, Milligan “convalesced” by conjuring forth the Goon’s surrealistic universe, a world he created to cope with the horrors of seeing fields full of wooden crosses. As his fellow enlistee and later cast member Secombe (Ed Jewett) points out, their work on the Goons was an attack on “every pompous nitwit officer we ever served under.”

Blame the war? Blame the teachers?

Beyond the obvious question— why does Zizka keep returning to plays that explore this notion?— the real question is: What is he trying to do with it?

Zizka’s tenderly depicted revelation of Beach’s combat-instigated suffering, especially in a bizarre play like Ying Tong, could easily stand by itself as a subtle, calculated anti-war message— a sort of implied counterfactual that asks, “Think what Milligan could have created had he never been shell-shocked in Italy; think what kind of lives any of that war’s soldiers could have lived had they never suffered the same?”

Or maybe, in line with the other two plays, Zizka is taking the opposite, more controversial stand: inveighing against the current conventional mantras that urge teachers everywhere to encourage creative activity without regard for any standards or merit of the work produced.

Obviously, personal suffering has given rise to some of the greatest works in history. No one could imagine Mozart writing better music if he’d lived a life of luxury. And the positive (if not upbeat) ending of all three plays suggests that Zizka believes the artistic outcome justifies the artist’s suffering.

The Wilma’s old days

Maybe Zizka is hearkening back to his leaner days in the Wilma’s 105-seat theater on Sansom Street, winking at his own success at the Wilma, or playing schoolmaster to every gripe ever uttered by theater artists yearning for more funding, easier lives or “a more supportive atmosphere” in which to produce their work. In any case, he’s getting results, having made compelling productions out of all three plays in which he explores this theme.

Certainly Beach, in Ying Tong, commands a gripping stranglehold on the highs and lows of Milligan’s creative euphoria and crippling despair. And I can think of only a handful (John Zak, Jared Reed, Chris Mullen, Geoff Sobelle) of actors in town who could handle the demands of the Peter Sellers role as exquisitely as Beckingham does. The part requires seamless shifts between nearly a dozen voices, combined with the gravitas to convince us (through the “Winter of our Discontent” speech from Richard III) that Sellers could go on to greater dramatic success in the films Dr. Strangelove and Lolita. Beckingham’s performance raises the bar on comedic acting in this town for years to come.

The thinker in me would love to know with certainty why Zizka has invested so much of his recent efforts in exploring stories of artists who suffer for their art. My theatergoer side recognizes that his choices and production values represent the kind of theater that, if I weren’t a member of the press, would once again make me a subscriber. Dependently arising or not, great suffering, and the great art that results, is currently on display at the Wilma.