Many years ago, in Norway, I was visiting Oslo’s National Gallery of Art, mostly to see the works of Edvard Munch. There was an entire room of his works on display on this surprisingly hot day in a shockingly un-air conditioned museum. (The top floor was closed due to the possibility of people passing out.) What must this do to the art? I wondered. I’d thought art was always displayed in climate controlled galleries. And I received an even further shock when I was actually told it was fine to use flash while taking photos of the paintings. What? Everyone knows that this kind of thing is bad for them. Isn’t it?
I was reminded of this experience while watching Steppenwolf Theatre’s provocative production of Jessica Dickey’s drama, “The Rembrandt.” In this play, a museum guard takes Oslo one step further and actually touches a famous painting, giving in to a primal temptation and setting off a collision of concepts and ideas that spans thousands of years of western culture. “The Rembrandt” asks some difficult questions, and it doesn’t always provide the answers. But answers to tough questions (like why the museum in Oslo was not air conditioned) do not always arrive easily. Nor do they, if they arrive, necessarily bring us peace.
Since the play covers three separate time spans (modern day America, Rembrandt’s Holland, and Homer’s Greece), the small ensemble of actors are each called upon to do double duty. Francis Guinan (who will be replaced by Joe Dempsey after 10/22) stars as the guard, Henry, and as a quite drunk and very disillusioned Dutch Master. John Mahoney gives a solo tour de force as a slightly bewildered Homer as well as playing Henry’s terminally ill husband Simon. A much younger actor (Ty Olwin) portrays a new, brash museum guard, Dodger, as well as Rembrandt’s son Titus, and the ensemble is rounded out by Karen Rodriguez as a museum patron and the painter’s young wife and Gabriel Ruiz as a museum cop and a nurse. It’s a tight, strong group, and these actors complement each other beautifully, but the real magic in this play is what the audience can’t see: the art, which is left to our imagination.
The painting in question here is Rembrandt’s Aristotle With a Bust of Homer. The 1653 masterwork is the central subject of both the first and second acts of this short three-act play (presented with no intermission). The third is focused on the man who has been touched by touching it.
One of the central questions that lives somewhere at the core of this play is, “What makes a work of art great anyway?” The first act casts people as “unworthy” to touch the creations of those who are not mere mortals. Madeline (Rodriguez) faints as she tries simply to copy it. And when Dodger has the audacity to suggest a physical connection, she acts as though he has suggested an assault. An emotional connection is fine; a mental connection is fine. A physical one? Don’t be absurd! This is greatness; you don’t touch greatness. Yet this painting is about establishing connections by touching. Madeline’s failure to make her connection may be due to the grief she feels over a lost relationship. “The aloneness,” she says, “is the truth.”
It’s only when Henry re-enters and voices the thought that he sometimes wishes he could touch the golden thread of being that Rembrandt painted on this canvas that we begin to sense the real question the play is asking: “What connection are we supposed to have to art?” Both of the others suddenly decide to urge Henry on—”Maybe something will get in”—and eventually all three reach out and make that contact. It is, as we discover in the third act, as much a spiritual one as a physical one. But it is a connection not merely to paint and canvas; it connects them to the entire history of the work, including an extended scene in which Rembrandt himself shows how much he detests both the subject of this work and the man who has commissioned it, and apparently puts the bust into it on a whim. (Another sub-question: Can the painter of a great work despise it? Can it still then be great? )
The moment Rembrandt considers Homer, we zoom back to ancient Greece to meet (who else) the great poet himself. Reminding us of who he was, Homer (Mahoney) suggests that he too would take issue with our interpretation of his art: it should never be written down. “It should be oral,” he tells us. “A good poem should make you look down and suddenly see yourself.” Seeing each other, he tells us, is how we know we are alive.
Did you watch me pull myself up, grasp that link in the golden chain
And start raving about poetry not knowing that I’m here?
All of this is played out under the careful direction of Hallie Gordon, who makes the most out of a cleverly designed set by Regina Garcia. Jenny Mannis’ costumes too are dead on: Rodriguez’s second act ensemble should be in a museum itself. Everything about this play is meticulously designed to remind us that what we are watching, too, is art, and we are having our own interactions with it.
Art is, the play seems to argue, all about the connections it can make to us. And when Henry touches the art, he realizes the missed connections he is allowing in his life. Act Three appropriately takes him home to spend time with his dying lover (in the presence of a vase that is exactly like one we saw Rembrandt with in Act Two: the art watches over them here as well). His quiet “I’m here” reminds him (and us) that art is (as the subject of that painting, Aristotle, said) an imitation of life. To imitate life, the artist needs to connect to life. Without a true feeling for life, how can he create art? But the viewer of art needs to reciprocate. No, we can’t all go around touching masterworks. But we need to find our own connections to them or they are just pictures hanging on a wall.
The Rembrandt is being presented by Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago through Nov.11. Tickets are $88-108
chicagodramagirl