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A Marriage of Ideas in ‘The Wedding’

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Czech director Vladimir Strnisko attempts to marry European ideas with American sensibilities in Bertolt Brecht’s “The Wedding” (1919), opening Tuesday at Taper, Too.

“Brecht wrote this play when he was 20 years old, part of a series of five one-acts,” Strnisko explained through an interpreter. Written for a Munich comic named Valentine, Strnisko believes that Brecht’s primary inspiration was Chekhov’s 1881 “The Wedding” (written, coincidentally, when Chekhov was also 20). “It’s the same grotesque way of seeing things,” noted the director. “Chekhov’s was the beginning of modern absurd theater; Brecht reinforced this style.”

Strnisko also likens Brecht’s broad, almost slapstick quality to the “American grotesque” style of Charlie Chaplin’s films. Set in Europe in the ‘20s, the 90-minute, nine-character social satire centers on a couple’s wedding-day feast, and the motley assortment of friends and relatives who have come to celebrate with them--a distinctly lower-class assemblage with aspirations to the bourgeoisie.

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Strnisko, who mounted back-to-back stagings of Chekhov’s and Brecht’s wedding plays at Prague’s Cinoherny Club in 1986, said he’s approaching this experience as a fresh one. “It’s not a transfer,” he said. “You cannot duplicate something from five years ago. Also, the American actors are coming (to the piece) out of their own environment. But the understanding of humor and human relationships is very universal.”

As for any cultural barrier, the artistic director of Bratislava’s Slovak National Theatre admits that reconciling “the concept of the play, the (European) social strata of relationships, is different. In Czechoslovakia, you’re in the midst of it; here, American actors have to do a little homework to understand these ideas. I want it to be a ‘Wedding’ American audiences can relate to, because American actors are playing for an American public.”

THINKING GREEN: An Claidheamh Soluis, the Celtic Arts Center, holds a St. Patrick’s Day Gala today at the Four Star Theater in Los Angeles. The all-afternoon Sean O’Casey trilogy will feature performances of “Shadow of a Gunman” at 4:30 and “Juno and the Paycock” at 7:30, plus a staged reading of “The Plough and the Stars” at 2. Admission to the complete festival (which includes between-shows food, music and dance) is $25.

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