The Divine Reality Comedy, Bread and Puppet Theater, Boston Cyclorama, 10.02.08

Bread and Puppet Theater is clearly a great American institution with a long-standing history of producing thought-provoking, politically astute work within a well-defined and original aesthetic. It was therefore with great anticipation that I attended ‘The Divine Reality Comedy’ at the Boston Cyclorama - an astonishing cylindrical space built to house ‘The Battle of Gettysburg’, a huge depiction of a central battle of the US Civil War.

All started well with joyous music provided by the Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band and the arrival of a crazed Santa Claus narrator figure played by Peter Schumann (the founder of the troupe) himself. However, here things, from my perspective, began to go downhill. At the end of the evening I felt somewhat baffled, and had to admit that at times during the performance I had been bored.

What might have been the problem? Terry Byrne, writing in the Boston Globe, points the way with this opening comment: “"The Divine Reality Comedy" is not as sharply focused as some of his [Schumann’s] past efforts”. And although Byrne feels that the piece eventually redeemed itself, I’m not so sure. Part of the problem was that the expected resonances with Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ were almost entirely absent: Bread and Puppet’s version followed neither the structure nor, really, the tone of the original.

Furthermore, the succession of images was at times so obscure, so abstracted, that it even seemed self-indulgent. The following quote, from Claudia La Rocco of the New York Times, is telling: “a wondrous dance occurs between large white equine cutouts and their handlers, the [chorus]. These horses, with their wise eyes and impossibly arched backs, were half Chagall and half Steig in appearance. Who knows what allegorical purpose they serve; they seemed far too real to serve any purpose but their own.” The problem is that if we can’t see ‘what allegorical purpose they serve’, they will have difficulty functioning effectively as a symbol. And, while it may well be useful to occasionally encounter images that have no symbolic connections we can relate to our own experiences, in this case I felt there were too many of them to create a coherent piece.

During one of many interludes in which the part-volunteer group brought together for this performance (who generally played their roles excellently) walked aimlessly about the stage I had the feeling that this was a performance on behalf of the performers, rather than the audience – precisely the opposite of what I expected to find at Bread and Puppet. So, while there were moments of beauty and power, I was left feeling somewhat let-down.