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Dont worry, a director says to an actress at the beginning ofReturning to Reims: Its not theater.
It turns out however that the line is more than an easy laugh.
Its to steal Pauls strained description of his own film work multilayered.
On the surface, the contained, idea-drivenReturning to Reimscan feel like a textural departure for Ostermeier.
So what led the punk-rock German director to the pensive French philosopher?
Hes meditating on Europes 20th-century class struggle and how it has warped into this eras frightening shift rightward.
And for over an hour of Ostermeiers two-hour intermissionless show, read is really all she does.
Its a daring choice, and an effective one.
Eribon is cracking pop kick open the political through the personal.
And such reconciliation must begin, as Hamlets meeting with the ghost does, with listening.
And hes the kind of guy who mansplains the concept of mansplaining to Katy.
Shes been conditioned to hesitate by the same system thats conditioned Paul to hold forth with confidence.
Hoss is the only actor who remains utterly natural throughout.
It also doesnt help that Hoss never seems to register our presence in the way Toni and Paul do.
A few at most not me.
But Ostermeier has brought us together to experience its painfully urgent ideas communally.
In Elizabethan England, audiences spoke not ofseeinga play, but of going tohearone.
At least, thats what she thinks shes doing.
Im among the thousands of women about my age who performed in undergraduate productions of the play.
No, its more than a gnawing: its outright frustration.
But Im not 19 anymore, and Im ready to articulate it.
Heres the thing: Ensler has had uterine cancer.
She has suffered, and she has worked to change the world for the better.
The first deserves sympathy, and the second, respect.
AndIn the Body of the Worldis nothing if not self-satisfied and problematic.
She describes hearing hundreds of horror stories during her time in the Congo that all began to bleed together.
The destruction of vaginas.
The pillaging of minerals.
The raping of the Earth.
The play is a public therapy session by and for Ensler herself.
Shes more interested in self-diagnosing (did her cancer come from tofu?
From cheating or being cheated on?
From worrying every day for 56 years that I wasnt good enough?
Was I making a trauma baby?
striving to ascribe to it and to her fight against it a moral meaning.
She never reckons with the possibility that it might be meaningless.
Why does it feel like Ensler is being sainted?
Whose suffering are we being asked to feel for here the victims or the actors?
It might seem that a memoir is inherently egoistic territory, and perhaps in some ways it is.
Ostermeiers interpretation of Eribon is in fact doing its work in the body of the world.
In the end, Enslers play is really all about Eve.
