• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • NEWS+OPINIONS
    • NEWS TO US
    • COLUMNS
      • APPARENT HORIZON
      • DEAR READER
      • Close
    • LONGFORM FEATURES
    • OPINIONS
    • EDITORIAL
    • Close
  • ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
    • FILM
    • MUSIC
    • COMEDY
    • PERFORMING ARTS
    • VISUAL ARTS
    • Close
  • DINING+DRINKING
    • EATS
    • SIPS
    • BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU
    • Close
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CANNABIS
      • TALKING JOINTS MEMO
      • Close
    • WELLNESS
    • GTFO
    • Close
  • STUFF TO DO
  • TICKETS
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT
    • MASTHEAD
    • ADVERTISE
    • Close

Dig Bos

The Dig - Greater Boston's Alternative News Source

A FEARLESS, BOLD VISION IN ARLEKIN’S THE STONE

Written by CHRISTOPHER EHLERS Posted September 24, 2019 Filed Under: A+E, Performing Arts

Rimma Gluzman (foreground), Viktoriya Kovalenko, Darya Denisova and Sanna Kovalenko (background). Photo by Irina Danilova.

 

★★★★☆

 

One house in Dresden becomes ground zero for a multigenerational exploration of guilt, complicity, survival, and truth in Marius von Mayenburg’s The Stone, which plays at Needham’s Arlekin Players Theatre through Sept 29.

 

The play is a complicated one, made even more difficult by the fact that that it jumps back and forth in time and unfolds in splinter-like segments, all of which seem to whiz past our heads like shrapnel from an explosion. Arlekin’s production—with the most thrilling design elements you’re likely to see all year—is directed with a ghoulish, avant-garde allure by Igor Golyak, the creativity of which is unrivaled by anything in recent memory. 

 

In 1935, Wolfgang (David Gamarnik) and Witha (a drop-dead brilliant Darya Denisova) purchase the house from a Jewish couple that is about to flee Germany. (We only meet the wife, Mieze Schwarzmann, played with stone-cold intensity by Rimma Gluzma.) Believing that the Schwarzmanns still live there, members of the Hitler Youth attack the house, throwing a stone through the window.

 

In 1945, Dresden is being bombed, yet the house survives. As the Russians invade the city, Wolfgang commits suicide while his wife, Witha, survives with their daughter, Heidrun (an astonishing Viktoriya Kovalenko). 

 

By 1953, Witha—now 43—decides to leave the house behind to escape to West Germany with her daughter. As Witha and Heidrun pack up to leave, Heidrun finds a stone that had been used in the attack on the house a decade earlier. When Heidrun presses her mother about her father’s role in all of this, Witha lies and says that he died trying to arrange for the escape of a Jewish family. Satisfied by thinking of her father as a hero, Heidrun buries the stone in the garden.

 

The house is thrown into a kind of flux by 1978, and it becomes communal property lived in by three different families. Witha—now 68—returns to the house with a pregnant Heidrun, now 38, and they meet Stefanie (Anna Kovalenko), a 15-year-old girl who now calls the house home. Remembering the stone from 25 years earlier, Heidrun digs it up and takes it with her.

 

Lurching forward to 1993, Witha—now 83—reclaims the house and moves back in with her daughter and granddaughter. But a figure from the past comes to disturb things, and with her arrival everything that Heidrun believed—and everything that Witha tried to move past—stands to be shattered.

 

Two “conductors,” as they are called in the program (played here by Jenya Brodskaia and Misha Tyutyunik), are imagined here as Warholian figures, complete with shocking white wigs and black turtlenecks. The play curiously opens with a bizarre scene in which the two Warhols eat a hamburger, a riff on a video Warhol actually made in 1982. As the action of the play proper unfolds, the Warhol figures seem to curate the look of each scene, sometimes by arranging prop pieces to their liking, and sometimes focusing a camera, which is then displayed on various TV sets around the theater. The reason for this isn’t clear, and the conductors don’t seem to be mentioned in the original script, but I’m not complaining: It just goes to underscore the absolute fearlessness of Golyak and the Arlekin Players, and I’m a sucker for high-concept productions.

 

David R. Gammons’ scenic design is thrilling, as are Nastya Bugaeva’s splattered white costumes, Jeff Adelberg’s lighting, Vladimir Gusev’s video designs, and Jakov Jakoulov’s indispensable score. In many ways, Arlekin has pulled off an incredible feat, presenting challenging, dramatically rich material in a way so staggeringly creative that you can’t help but take notice.  

 

This isn’t something you want to miss.

 

THE STONE. THROUGH 9.29 AT ARLEKIN PLAYERS, 368 HILLSIDE AVE., NEEDHAM. ARLEKINPLAYERS.COM

Christopher Ehlers
CHRISTOPHER EHLERS
+ posts

Theater critic for TheaterMania & WBUR’s TheArtery | Theater Editor for DigBoston | film and music critic for EDGE Media | Boston Theater Critics Association.

    This author does not have any more posts.

Filed Under: A+E, Performing Arts Tagged With: Anna Kovalenko, Arlekin Players, Bladimir Gusev, Darya Denisova, David Gamarnik, David R. Gammons, Igor Golyak, Jakov Jakoulov, Jeff Adelberg, Kenya Brodskaia, Marius von Mayenburg, Misha Tyutyunik, Nastya Bugaeva, Needham, Rimma Gluzma, Viktoriya Kovalenko

WHAT’S NEW

Massachusetts Bill, Victim Advocates Call For Coordinated Date-Rape Drug Response

Massachusetts Bill, Victim Advocates Call For Coordinated Date-Rape Drug Response

Report: Fewer Youth Transition Out Of Massachusetts Foster Care System

Report: Fewer Youth Transition Out Of Massachusetts Foster Care System

State Wire: Activists Urge Congress To Raise Debt Ceiling, Resist Spending Cuts

State Wire: Activists Urge Congress To Raise Debt Ceiling, Resist Spending Cuts

Dancing On Banana Peels: Life On Lifetime Parole In Massachusetts

Dancing On Banana Peels: Life On Lifetime Parole In Massachusetts

Justice Department Completes Vetting Of Rachael Rollins

Justice Department Completes Vetting Of Rachael Rollins

AG Investigating BPD To Determine If “Gang Unit” Engages In “Unconstitutional Policing”

AG Investigating BPD To Determine If “Gang Unit” Engages In “Unconstitutional Policing”

Primary Sidebar

LOCAL EVENTS

AAN Wire


Most Popular

  • AG Investigating BPD To Determine If “Gang Unit” Engages In “Unconstitutional Policing”
  • Over Yondr: Are Cell Phone Pouches At Shows Liberating, Dangerous, Or Annoying?
  • Deep Cuts Brings Sandwiches, Craft Beer, And Live Music To Medford
  • Family Of Woman Killed By Commuter Rail Sues MBTA For Crash Records
  • Daring Greatly: TikTok Star Alden McWayne (aka Gucci Pineapple) On Scheming And Dreaming

Footer

Social Buttons

DigBoston facebook DigBoston Twitter DigBoston Instagram

Masthead

About

Advertise

Customer Service

About Us

DigBoston is a one-stop nexus for everything worth doing or knowing in the Boston area. It's an alt-weekly, it's a website, it's an email blast, it's a twitter account, it's that cool party that you were at last night ... hey, you're reading it, so it's gotta be good. For advertising inquiries: sales@digboston.com To reach editorial (and for inquiries about internship opportunities): editorial@digboston.com