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Take one Nobel Prize-winning author, add an inquisitive journalist and a mysterious unseen woman, set their story on a remote Norwegian Island and add a dash of Elgar – the result? "Enigma Variations."
This Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio on 3 production is an intriguing story about the nature of relationships, the value of love and the truth behind those we share it with.
"Enigma Variations" has an enviable pedigree. It’s received more than 100 productions internationally. It is a quirky and delightful two-character play that keeps the audience riveted throughout with revelations and reversals.
The play is the crisscross of three destinies of two men and a woman who is no longer alive. Throughout the play, love is sharply analyzed and dissected along with the accompanying frustrations of cowardice and pleasure.
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a French philosophy professor-turned-playwright who made his mark on the world stage by creating deeply philosophical plays that are also first-rate entertainment.
Schmitt’s "Enigma Variations" uses, by turns, greatness and harshness in the characters’ feelings, elegies and duels. The ecstasy and the frenzy that are part of any contest include lyrical heights, cynical dirty tricks and sensational dramatic turns.
The text is loaded with suspense, love, creation and imagination. Schmitt plays with ideas, characters and temperaments and the wretchedness of life. The stage is a game for Schmitt and he knows how to make philosophy brighter, especially in his witty dialogues. That is how our most inner thoughts are brought into full daylight. His answers sound obvious and clear.
The purpose here is what Schmitt describes as an everyday philosophical question. "Who do you love and when you are in love," he asks, "do you know the person you love, really?"
Tom Matkus plays Abel Znorko, a reclusive Nobel Prize-winning novelist who lives alone on a remote Norwegian Island. He has just published a passionate and personal book of letters that is a correspondence between two lovers – a man and a woman, the latter with only the initials "HM."
Craig Bockhorn plays small-town journalist Erik Larsen who is granted a rare interview with the egotistical author. He questions Znorko about the book, asking whether one of the two lovers is Znorko. The author becomes easily angered and is about to throw Larsen out when he relents and decides to give him the scoop.
Eventually, it is discovered the letters are indeed a correspondence between Znorko and a lover. It also turns out they both knew the same woman – but they knew her quite differently.
The play’s title is actually the name of a composition by Sir Edward Elgar. The piece has 14 different variations on a theme – a hidden melody the composer refused to reveal and took with him to his deathbed. Schmitt suggests the woman, "HM," was an enigma neither man really figured out nor really knew. From this, Schmitt tantalizes the audience by delving deeper into the mystery with twists and turns that lead to four or five major revelations.
But the plot is a bit contrived and it panders to our emotions. One revelation is used to create the sentimentality needed in the egomaniacal character of Znorko. It feels substantially false and a smart attempt on Schmitt’s part to use the conventional device of revelation as a way to further character development and generate some sort of pathos.
But Schmitt’s meditation on the convention of relationships – and the temperaments of wordsmiths – is often bitingly funny, such as Znorko’s response to whether he had ever tied the knot: "Marriage? For a writer? What, someone to dust my desk for me?" Schmitt’s dialogue is just as often poetic and aching, from Znorko’s passionate description of a time he fell in love to Larsen’s life-is-short rationale for being nice to others: "I see the skeleton beneath the skin." The plot turns are a bit head-spinning towards the play’s end. The resulting conundrum, as the music on which "Enigma Variations" is based, leaves the characters and the audience with plenty to think about.
In the production notes, the author comments, "My characters talk a lot, but they very seldom speak the truth. Otherwise, there would not be any play at all. Once they have spoken their truth, life is going to deny it. Otherwise, I would not acknowledge the play as one of mine.
"The clash between our thoughts and reality may be the main theme to be found in my plays. It is easy to have convictions, but it is necessary to get rid of them. Men cannot always keep hiding from life behind their beliefs, their choices and their convictions. Life is full of surprise; it does not always come up to our expectations, it keeps upsetting our plans, it brings some density and forces itself upon us with all its mysteries. Not one abstract point of view can stand against life. No one philosophy has ever succeeded in solving life and its mysteries. I do enjoy mysteries and I understand with much delight that life cannot be understood."
"Enigma Variations" is self-deprecating. It moves along briskly under the direction of Sam Semoy and, even if the audience is expected to go along with the predictable and contrived plot, it possesses a caustic wit. Despite the sarcastic tone, the play does succeed in grabbing and holding the audience’s attention during its 90 minutes.
Enigma Variations
Through Jan. 22
Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio on 3
825 Walnut St.
Tickets: $26
215-574-3550
