NOEMI SCHLOSSER
STAGE DIRECTOR, PLAYWRIGHT & COACH
La Musica
A play by Marguerite Duras
Premiere Chicago, Chicago Dramatists, April 19th 2012
"Eschewing the histrionics of confrontation and desire, it highlights the behavioral chasm between honest expression and civility, leaving you squirming in your seat." Time Out Chicago****
"Of all the things that are final, there is nothing more final than this…"
After a three-year separation, a couple meets in the hotel where they lived when they first fell in love, Tonight we see them on the eve of finalizing their divorce decree. As night falls and their conversation unfolds, the depravity and hunger of their love is revealed; the infidelity, the violence, an intent to kill. Marguerite Duras describes her characters as being torn apart by the evil forces of passion, a passion that both nourished and destroyed their love. We will eavesdrop on this private conversation with strains of live jazz lingering through the performance.
In collaboration with the Alliance Française de Chicago, Chicago Dramatists and the Palm House Hotel.
"Noemi Schlosser offers up a highly original evening here...Schlosser’s vision is restrained yet unique. Her lovers address the audience often, allowing Duras’ pointed words a strong theatrical focus." Brian Kirst
"A divorcing couple’s final encounter gets a moving, dreamlike depiction in Noémi Schlosser’s production of Marguerite Duras’s one-act." Will Fink
"Eschewing the histrionics of confrontation and desire, it highlights the behavioral chasm between honest expression and civility, leaving you squirming in your seat." TimeOut Chicago
"Laidlaw and Gray drop bombshells like sugar cubes at high tea." Katy Walsh
"LA MUSICA is a perfect no frills-no thrills date night, whether it’s a first one or a last one." Katy Walsh
CAST & CREATIVES
Directed Noémi Schlosser
She Elisabeth Laidlaw
Him John Gray
Saxophone Brandon Campbell / Randall Carpenter
Adaptation /translation Alice Austen
Set Noémi Schlosser and Alice Austen
PRESS
CHICAGO ONE KATY WALSH
Tuesday April 24 2012
For anyone who’s ever been in a breakup, La Musica, with its quiet, measured simmer, may well be the most frustrating 50 minutes imaginable—which is precisely what makes it compelling. Eschewing the histrionics of confrontation and desire, it highlights the behavioral chasm between honest expression and civility, leaving you squirming in your seat.
Marguerite Duras’s 1965 play, in a new translation by Chicago Dramatists resident playwright Alice Austen, depicts the final good-byes of a couple finalizing their divorce after a two-year separation. Their meeting place is the hotel where they lived during the first three months of their marriage, represented here by simple chalk drawings on the floor and walls, which the actors smudge, erase and alter throughout the performance. Though the trick is probably underused, it effectively highlights the extent to which the characters, called Her and Him, have lost touch with their shared history, as well as their struggle to retain control of their memories.
John Gray and Elizabeth Laidlaw give remarkably quiet performances. They spend much of the play in forced isolation, Gray putting a pleasant face on self-destructive instincts to rehash old wounds, while Laidlaw looks hauntingly as though she’s about to cry but desperate to laugh.
The music, performed live by saxophonists Brandon Campbell and Randall Carpenter, could benefit from a punchier structure to contrast with the actors’ dreamy behavior. An 11th-hour confrontation isn’t quite able to ratchet up to the specificity and danger it’s looking for. But the way director Noémi Schlosser turns a kitchen-sink two-hander into a dreamy, lonely reflection on love and loss shouldn’t be ignored.