Danton's Death

Perhaps it is because John Williams tried both to direct and to play the lead that Danton's Death seems so unfocused. In fairness to him it should be said that he didn't want to. And he certainly hasn't structured the production to show himself off. In fact, that may be part of the trouble. In any case, the play is dull.

George Buechner wrote Danton when he was 21, and with all the grandiosity one would expect of a young German fatalist and revolutionary. Pronouncements follow epigrams in endless, dulling sequence. In Mueller's translation, at least, it is hard to believe that the characters could be taking themselves seriously. There is almost no psychological exposition more subtle than Danton's announcement that he is bored with the Revolution, or Collot D'Herbois' mechanical callousness.

Yet there is a feeling of doom about the play--a current that moves below the froth of conversation. The mockery of the whores, the very emptiness of Robespierre's rhetoric, make Buechner's point: that man has no free will, that the dreary sameness of life must over-take the most heroic and the most corrupt. Reading the play, I felt this undertow. At the Loeb, I didn't.

Buechner leaves a lot to the actor and the director. There is little in the speeches to betray the feelings of the men who speak--or to convince us of the feelings they do profess. As he kneels at the guillotine, Herault-Sechelles breaks down: "I can't seem to manage a joke." There are few such lines provided. Almost none of the actors invented the necessary gestures or falterings of the voice to make themselves believable.

For all his shouting, Lorenzo Weisman (Camille) never convinced me he didn't want to die--or that he loved his wife Lucille (Laura Esterman). Though he certainly looked the most effete man in Paris, Edward Needle (Saint-Just) relied entirely on an energetic delivery of his lines to make himself frightening. He wasn't. The only thing distinguishing David Blocker (Phillipeau) from a mannequin was his pasted-on look of righteousness.

John McDonnel (Legendre), Randall McLeod (Barere), William Dockin (Collot d'Herbois) and George Hamlin (Herault-Sechelles) all manager relatively lively characterizations. But they relied entirely on what Buechner gave them. Not one of them worked out any business to rivet the audience's attention. When Robert Chapman (Robespierre) took the podium to address the Jacobin Club, he held the audience in silence while he put on his glasses. No one else in the cast did something like that--not even Williams.

Williams-the-director throws away some excellent opportunities. When Saint-Just finishes a speech, for instance, he is left on the raised platform with Robes-pierre. A look then would have explained their relations. There is no look. The blocking was equally revealing. People pop up and down quite predictably, exchange places and assume new postures, at the end of each lengthy speech or exchange.

I suspect this comes from a lack of perspective on Williams' part. Directing himself, he must not have seen what wasn't working. His own performance is suitably ironic, suitably loud. But he never builds to any turning point. It is easy to miss some of his crucial lines. If Williams meant Danton to seem to be playing a role, he almost succeeded. But he never gives us a patch of sincerity to contrast the act with. Even in the lovely prison soliloquy, Danton's character remains ambiguous.

In the end, it is the reliance on diction and neglect of theatricality that makes Danton a bore. No one's timing is good. The guillotining scene is no more than a babble of voices; Herault-Sechelles' last line is almost lost. Danton's is. The skillful performances of Chapman and Miss Esterman must be enjoyed without relation to the rest of the play.

John Anderson's set leaves a lot to be desired. One change of place is quite unindicated. Those who didn't know the play must have been utterly confused much of the time. The lighting was occasionally effective, but often too dim. Michael Erhardt wrote some music I wish there had been more of.