STAGE REVIEW : ‘Oktoberfest’: Play Is an Inert Depiction of Troubled Times

Casimir and Caroline are quarreling lovers in Odon von Horvath’s “Oktoberfest.” Against the backdrop of a 1933 Munich beer-drinking festival, a nihilistic oasis from Germany’s growing repression, they bicker, break up and fret over their lives.

Casimir is a chauffeur who has lost his job. Caroline is a secretary who wants to get ahead. He’s moodier, an angry boy worried about the future. She’s lively and optimistic, a pretty girl who understands intuitively that feminine beauty always rises.

Despite their youthful vigor, “Oktoberfest,” UC Irvine’s final drama offering of the season, is not a vivid or passionate play. It’s the opposite, a deliberately drawn but surprisingly torpid work, apparently designed to show the moral emptiness created by the social problems of Germany in the early ‘30s. Von Horvath, an obscure playwright who suffered under Nazism, writes intelligently but, here at least, it’s often a bloodless experience.

At UCI, director Dudley Knight does little to overcome the drama’s fundamental inertness. It may be what he’s after--being faithful to von Horvath’s sense of vacuity and banality--but the staging is problematic, leaving a production that has intriguing patches but is less than involving as a whole.

Casimir and Caroline are merely symbols of the times, as is the Oktoberfest itself, a blatantly ironic contrast to the collective anxiety of a Germany on the verge of Nazism. Cindy Felice’s set is an almost menacing cartoon of a carnival, with surreal rides and a test-of-strength amusement in the shape of an ominous man. This cutout seems to presage the shadowy figures who were to emerge, from the street thugs who became the SS, to Hitler himself.

Caroline (Ann Hamilton) and Casimir (James Calleri) aren’t the only ones moving through this weird playground. Von Horvath also gives us Schurtzinger (Jonathan Greenman), a young tailor and thinker who pursues Caroline. His boss is the exploitative bigwig Rauch (director Knight), a man with large appetites, especially where Caroline is concerned.

Rauch’s sidekick is the corrupt judge, Speer (Patrick Healey). Casimir has his own friends, Merkl (Mikael Salazar) and Erna (Kitty Balay), a couple of lowlifes surviving by their wits.

The cast has trouble dramatizing the frequently didactic thrust of von Horvath’s dialogue. At times, an emotional tide rises--as when Calleri fumes over his fate, or Knight unabashedly displays his sleaziness--but the general feeling remains staid, at times even ceremonial.

The most striking scene involves a group of sideshow performers parading about for the revelers. But this vision--of a gorilla woman, a dog-faced boy and Siamese twins--is not so much disturbing and revealing as merely picturesque.

‘OKTOBERFEST’

A UC Irvine production of Odon von Horvath’s drama. Directed by Dudley Knight. With James Calleri, Ann Hamilton, Jonathan Greenman, Mikael Salazar, Kitty Balay, Dudley Knight, Patrick Healey, Lyena Strelkoff, Holly Holsinger, Heather Jones, Joe Batte, Curran Reichert, Doyle Ott, Carrie Ellen Mathiott, Tracy Beard, Linda Halaska, Tom Humphreys, Gregory Beirne, Buck Stevens, Matthew Shiner, Andrew Jett, Tracy Deitrick and Krista Downard. Set by Cindy Felice. Costumes by Elizabeth Novak. Lighting by Ellery J. Brown. Music director Alfred J. Lang. Plays today through Saturday at 8 p.m. with a Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. at the Fine Arts Village Theatre, UC Irvine. Tickets: $7 to $10. (714) 856-6616.