STAGE REVIEW : Jacobson’s ‘Degenerate Art’ Depicts Nolde’s Dilemma

“All art is political,” says outspoken painter Kathe Kollwitz in Tom Jacobson’s new play, “Degenerate Art,” at the Complex in Hollywood. If this rings trite and true, it’s because one can’t miss the implications after a year of arts-endowment trauma over the issues of obscene or unfit art.

“Degenerate Art” was written when Jacobson, a grant writer for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, became fascinated by the historical facts surrounding LACMA’s current “Degenerate Art” exhibit. He based his play on the life of Emil Nolde, one of the German Expressionists caught in the maelstrom of Nazi purification, whose works, much to his consternation, were included in the “Entartete Kunst” or “Degenerate Art” exhibit of 1937.

It was, to put it mildly, a novel Nazi experiment: an exhibit that would teach the German public what art to hate, while another exhibit, in a different hall, would instruct it in what art to admire.

Outlandish? Of course, but Jacobson seems to imply that what happened in Germany is not all that different in intent from the judgments of politicians who would like to dictate what is or is not acceptable as art.

Those are the issues in this Emil Nolde story, made all the more ironic by the fact that Nolde, among his peers, was devotedly German, even joining the Nazi Party in a patriotic stab, before realizing that the party was quite happy to stab him in the back.

Potentially chewy stuff for theater, and Jacobson knows how to write a lively scene and create a character. His dialogue zips along with a certain wit, avoiding the potholes of didacticism. He surrounds Nolde (played by a passionate Matt Chait) with the people most directly connected to his life: his Scandinavian wife, Ada (Angela Wallace); his ardent friend, Kollwitz (Tulis McCall); his Jewish art dealer, Wittner (Paul Gunning); a turncoat colleague, Ziegler (Bill Phillips), and a model named Flosshilde (Greta Blackburn) who plays both sides of this canvas.

As long as Jacobson remains in naturalistic territory, the play is if not gripping at least engaging, but when the hallucinatory characters in Nolde’s paintings invade the stage with frenzied dancing while Nolde paints away in a fit of inspiration, things merely look silly. Director Joseph Megel has not found a way to marry the styles. This is hodgepodge physical Expressionism that backfires. (Rene Olivas Gubernick did the choreography, while Carushka designed what are called the Walkyrie costumes; neither quite meets the demands of the occasion.)

Production values are decent. Robert W. Zentis has provided a workable set with rear projections of the Nolde and other “degenerate” art, capably engineered by Jessie Gray and Angela Wallace. The acting is at least competent (Wallace has an attractive quality of tenderness as the fragile Ada), but the performers are limited by an absence of dimension.

At no time are we really gripped by the bewilderment of collapsing civilization in the darkness that was gathering over Germany in the 1930s. The artists were stunned by the triumph of retrogression because they had not been able to imagine it until it was too late.

But Jacobson doesn’t give us that sweep. In its present version, “Degenerate Art” is a smallish play that makes straightforward philosophical points, but rarely looks below the surface. This absence of layering keeps it from taking on a deeper seriousness or rising much above the level of entertainment tinged with politics.

One piece of advice: A prior visit to the LACMA exhibit, stocked as it is with fervent Nolde paintings, will amplify the context and enhance enjoyment of the play.

* “Degenerate Art,” the Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $15; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.