http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/arts/robert-wilson-puts-shakespeares-sonnets-in-german-onstage.html 2014-10-09 00:49:23 Robert Wilson Puts ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ (in German) Onstage In Robert Wilson and Rufus Wainwright’s “Shakepeare’s Sonnets,” actors from the Berlin Ensemble caper about to musical accompaniment as the poetry is recited or sung in German. === No theater director working today has a signature as recognizable, and as unvarying, as “Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” The production had its premiere in 2009 at the Berliner Ensemble and was designed as a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the sonnets’ publication. This means, perhaps unfortunately for New York audiences, that most of the sonnets are either sung or recited in German. English supertitles are projected above the stage, but since Mr. Wilson’s work relies so strongly on its visual allure, requiring the audience to glance away from the stage pictures to the text impairs engagement. In any case, Mr. Wilson’s cryptic tableaus do not seem tethered very strongly — if at all — to the meanings in Shakespeare’s great poems charting the turbulent throes of love. The sonnets selected are presented in no particular order and vary randomly between those addressing the so-called Fair Youth, and speaking mostly of a serene and spiritual love, and those addressing the figure known as the Dark Lady, more turbulent and fraught with suffering. Rarely, if at all, do the quirky happenings onstage reflect the emotional texture of the sonnet in question. Trying to suss out exactly why, say, the figure of Elizabeth I, portrayed with crotchety vigor by Jürgen Holtz, should be reciting the famous Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), will get you nowhere, I’m afraid. Along with Elizabeth, who tramps in and out of the proceedings with a casual imperiousness, the characters in Mr. Wilson’s curio cabinet this time include Shakespeare himself (Angela Schmid), who, as the production begins, sits in a chair at the back of the all-white stage, apparently scribbling away. Every few seconds, he stretches his hand toward a small glowing orb, the sound of a buzzer is heard, and on capers another one of the figures in the show. (Generally, the ostensibly male characters are played by women and the female ones by men.) These include three red-haired women of varying heights, identically dressed in flowing black gowns; a fool (Angela Winkler) wearing a headpiece sprouting ram’s horns; a tubby, playful Cupid (Georgios Tsivanoglou) who at one point flies in with a bow and arrow and takes aim at the queen, slumped in a chair. (Amusingly, the arrow stops before hitting its target.) Mr. Wainwright’s music moves through an eclectic array of styles: simple piano-led melodies that recall his own recordings (he’s previously recorded some of the sonnets, and one is heard briefly here), ’80s synthesizer pop, an acrid burst or two of pseudo-Kurt Weill, something that resembles country-folk music of a vaguely medieval kind. There is also some Stravinsky-esque incidental music and, at one point, a grinding guitar solo performed within view of the audience by Dominic Bouffard, rock star style. Among the most But why, as Mr. Tambrea sings, is an impish figure reclining on a small daybed injecting himself with a hypodermic needle, and occasionally squeaking out an echo of a phrase from the sonnet? And why does the singer suddenly wrap a scarf around his neck and choke himself (or herself)? Another Which essentially sums up my response to “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” in its entirety.