Kaufman's '33 Variations' on Broadway

Moisés Kaufman's new play, 33 Variations, is about obsessions: Beethoven's with the little waltz Diabelli wrote and Kaufman's with Beethoven's "Diabelli" Variations (the 33 of the title), which are generally considered to be Beethoven's supreme contribution to the piano repertoire. Kaufman's central character, a musicologist, shares Kaufman's obsession, trying to solve the mystery of Beethoven's obsession; her research takes her to the Beethoven archives in Bonn, Germany, following the same path Kaufman took in his research to write this play.

Anton Diabelli (played here by Don Amendolia) was a music publisher; he wrote a waltz and issued an invitation to write variations to the 50 greatest composers of the day. And what a day it was in Vienna, 1819: Liszt, Schubert and Czerny all accepted and wrote one. Beethoven at first refused; but then, discovering possibility after possibility in it, he wrote 33, thereby redefining the musical variation.

There's a certain fascination in the mediocre inspiring greatness (consider Salieri and Mozart—33 Variations owes some debt to Amadeus). The central conceit of this production is that when someone reads or writes a score, we hear it as Diana Walsh plays the piano in full view of the audience.

Racing the clock

Kaufman's modern-day alter ego Katherine (Jane Fonda) and Beethoven (Zach Grenier) are both characters racing the clock: she against ALS, a degenerative neurological disease, and he against total deafness. The action shifts between the present and past, often with echoing dialogue ("I need more time"; "I need more time") to emphasize the parallels.

Katherine works in the archives with the help of a sympathetic, often ill-treated librarian (Susan Kellermann), examining the Beethoven "sketches," while we watch Beethoven write those scores 200 years earlier, with the help of a similarly ill-treated and long-suffering assistant (Erik Steele). But the parallels Kaufman draws between the obsessions are unconvincing: an academic paper, no matter how groundbreaking, is hardly the equivalent of sublime musical composition.

An implausible story line

All the characters feel underdeveloped, existing more as vehicles for the play's themes than as interesting, complex people. Katherine is an unlikable woman— an ungrateful friend and a cold mother long before she fell prey to Lou Gehrig's disease (although Kaufman provides no clue as to why she is as she is).

And why is Katherine so worried about her daughter Clare (Samantha Mathis), who seems, puzzlingly, alternately bratty and self-sacrificial? When Mike (Colin Hanks), a sweet nonentity, falls for Clare, how/why does he take off months from his job as a hospital nurse to live with the two women in Germany? Who's paying for all this— or do financial worries exist only in the 19th Century? Not to mention the ludicrous ease with which Katherine's euthanasia plans are made, ignoring all legal implications. Kaufman's determined to tell this story, regardless of how implausible it seems.

Tectonic Theatre provides imaginative treatment of the visual and aural space (the company is best known for The Laramie Project, about the murder of gay college freshman Matthew Shepard in Wyoming). But not until the middle of Act Two does 33 Variations finally, powerfully, deliver: Beethoven, desperately sick, stone deaf and wildly inspired, composes Variation No. 32 before our eyes, narrating in murmurs his creative, intuitive decisions as he makes them, while the pianist plays what the composer hears in his mind.

Jane Fonda's handicaps

Jane Fonda has famously reinvented herself repeatedly, from sex kitten to political activist to fitness fanatic to wife of the rich and powerful. Unfortunately, her reinvention of herself as a serious stage actor is hindered by a reedy voice, with mannered rhythms that never vary, rendering Katherine's personal and professional voices identically brittle. Even as Katherine's disease progresses— from cane to walker to wheelchair— until her "tongue has begun to die" and her speech necessarily becomes labored, her voice doesn't change noticeably. She keeps looking heavenward (or balcony-ward), occasionally forgetting that, once crippled, Katherine is incapable of the graceful gestures Fonda gives her.

By contrast, as Beethoven, Zach Grenier (always, always fine— from TV's Deadwood to Broadway's A Man for All Seasons) modulates his voice— louder and more exaggerated as Beethoven grows increasingly deaf. When, finally, he appears to Katherine in her dying dream, he speaks as a contemporary person without a German accent—after all, it's her mind conjuring up the conversation.

More movie stars on Broadway

This scene feels reminiscent of the dying dream in Margaret Edson's Wit— a far better play about another fatally ill, middle-aged female academic who has missed life by rigorously studying art. In 33 Variations the scene seems a contrivance— a device for the playwright to paste humor onto a humorless personality, making her death seem less terrible.

33 Variations tries to teach us what we need/want to know, but sinks into dysfunctional family drama, merely flirting with the mysteries of creativity that it fails to penetrate.

Note that March could well be subtitled "Stars Return to Broadway" Month. Besides Fonda's return, Jeremy Irons, who's been elsewhere for 25 years, and Joan Allen, ditto for 20, will open next week in Impressionism (watch this space!), while Susan Sarandon returns after 25 years in Exit the King, paired with Geoffrey Rush, who makes his Broadway debut (ditto!). And just wait to hear/see who/what April brings….



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