Theater: Amateur Night

Danton’s Death, by Georg Buechner. Physically, the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Lincoln Center Repertory’s new home, is resplendent (see SHOW BUSINESS). Financially, this theater company is the richest in the U.S. Dramatically, it is bankrupt. Under its new directors, Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, Lincoln Center begins its third season by patting together another of a seemingly endless series of dramatic mudpies.

Georg Buechner was an angry young German of the early 19th century. He was 21 when he wrote this play, and only 23 when he died. If he were alive today, he would presumably burn his draft card and spare the drama.

Danton’s Death is Buechner’s stab at planting Hamlet in the middle of the French Revolution. Compared with Buechner’s hero, Shakespeare’s is a prince of action and a man of few words. Buechner’s straw man is a compulsive blabbertongue who would rather rant than fight. The play is a petrified forest of conflicting themes. It can be variously regarded as a study in revolutionary disillusionment, an attack on revolutionary fanaticism or a defense of revolutionary intransigence. Danton can be seen as victim or traitor, Robespierre as scourge or hero, or both as merely hapless puppets in the lock-step march of historical determinism.

Any one of these themes might have stung the play into fitful life if it were not smothered in rhetoric. Danton inhales moral smog and exhales bombast. Herbert Blau is credited with translating the German; he has assuredly embalmed the English. Thanks to Blau, Robespierre has been given an outward resemblance to Barry Goldwater. This is a political subtlety fully worthy of the mentality that—in a since-deleted program note—linked Lyndon B. Johnson and Mao Tse-tung as fellow tyrants. Thanks to Blau, too, the direction resembles a wind machine blowing actors around like autumn leaves.

The cast could handle a senior-class play. Instead of drawing from the pool of New York’s unparalleled acting talent, Lincoln Center has chosen to import too many of the San Francisco minor-leaguers of Irving-cum-Blau. All this grandiose amateur night lacks is the famous gong of Major Bowes.