By Annie Holub
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 23, 1997

Shattering Glass:

Chris Richards Arizona Daily Wildcat The cast of Les Enfants Terribles (Children of the Game) appear onstage after their performance at Centennial Hall Tuesday night. The work, featuring the music of Philip Glass and the choreography of Susan Marshall, has been described as a "multi-media dance opera spectacle."

Les Enfants Terribles," or "Children of the Game," based on a film and novel by Jean Cocteau, has been called an "opera spectacle," which makes it sound like something not to miss. The show, created by Philip Glass and Susan Marshall, overtook the stage at Centennial Hall Tuesday evening. What ended up being not-to-miss about this performance was its conversational value - it may not have been spectacular or altogether breathtaking, but it was different, artistic in interpretation; the creativity of it was enough to make it noteworthy.

Philip Glass, who composed this final part of a trilogy of minimalist adaptations of Jean Cocteau's work, is well-known for writing such operas as "Einstein on the Beach," and string quartet pieces for the Kronos Quartet. The music was performed on three keyboards, one of which Glass played himself, that melted into each other, creating a monotonous electric-piano noise. After about 10 minutes, though, the music became secondary, almost unnoticeable to the opera as a whole. This, coming from a composer who was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1995. Since it's a government title, it probably means something important - to the French.

However, as sad the expression of the music was, there was still the intriguing aspect of the choreography by Susan Marshall. The story itself is about Lise and Paul, sister and brother, orphans who live together in a room. Their only friends are two other characters, Gerard and Agathe. The only other character in the play is a boy named Dargelos, who threw a snowball at Paul in the opening scene and then disappeared, only to be reincarnated through Agathe later in Paul and Lise's lives.

Four dancers each represented Lise and Paul; two represented Agathe. One of the dancers was also the singer, and, at times, it was hard to tell which one was projecting a vivacious soprano or tenor. Each dancer represented a different persona, and at times they would converge and create a strong stage presence, even though there were only four main characters. The multiple responses made the emotions of the characters more accessible - Glass said after the show that "the truth of the theater is more powerful than the truth of reality." We see something that happens on stage that we never see occurring in ourselves, so it therefore becomes more intriguing.

Marshall herself said that she didn't want the choreography to be secondary to the main action. The dancing in "Les Enfants" was more than integral - it was the best part by far.

The story of Lise and Paul is your basic Romeo and Juliet tragedy; two children, seemingly innocent at the beginning and then jaded and distraught at the end, are twisted up in deception, love and surrealism and eventually die at the end. The Game that is so strongly emphasized in the title and at certain points in the script serves as the unbreakable bond between Lise and Paul - incestuous in nature but never acted upon.

"Let's play the Game," Lise begged Paul.

"No." Paul replied indignantly.

Then:

"I don't want Agathe here. She distracts me from playing the Game," Paul said to Lise at another point in the story.

"But we never play the Game anymore," Lise replied.

Those are basically the only times it was mentioned. The audience is left to believe that the Game is some sort of hallucination in which Lise and Paul are together and at peace. The purpose this serves is to show that the world in which they live is hollow and empty.

Chris Richards Arizona Daily Wildcat Renowned composer Philip Glass speaks with audience members after Tuesday night's performance of Les Enfants Terribles, a play based on the novella by Jean Cocteau.

Lise tries to find a way out of the room and her life with Paul by becoming engaged to a friend of Gerard's. He dies in a car accident the night before the wedding, and Lise, Paul, Agathe and Gerard all move into his huge mansion together. There's a room in this mansion which is described as being "cavernous." "Its pointlessness instantly won a place in our hearts," says Gerard.

This room is the embodiment of the story and the opera itself. A void, trying to take up space, and doing so, but not very well. The basic source of entertainment was the dancers, whose strong interpretation of modern dance movements and stage presence techniques held attention spans for the duration of the performance. Shadowplay and the constant interaction between all of the dancers representing one character was diverting enough to make this performance memorable, and the creative way in which the stage was set up, especially at the very beginning, was also credible.

The first scene in which Lise and Paul are still children is danced behind a screen, and the English subtitles were projected floating amongst the dancers. This was very innovative and brought the opera back to its film origin, but when the screen went up, the words did too. That can easily be argued as being the main annoyance with opera - when the words are up high the audience can't follow both the action on stage and the dialogue, so something has to give. Usually the words are sacrificed and in this particular opera, not only were they up high, not all of them were translated for the audience. It's not certain whether this was a mistake, intentional, or due to redundancy in the script, but the effect was alienating and almost insulting. The dialogue that was actually projected on-stage in English was often phrases like "Idiot!"

With modern productions, especially in a genre like opera, creativity is rare. So when something comes along that is different, even if it's not necessarily good, it still has appeal. Hence, "its pointlessness instantly won a place in our hearts." Philip Glass' music for "Les Enfants Terrible" may not be all that listener-friendly, but how many operas are written on three keyboards? The story may be reaching desperately for symbolism at times, but the choreography is fascinating and expressive in its originality. While the general sentiment toward this interpretation of "Les Enfants" is of disappointment and apathy, the actual production techniques are artistically invigorating. Of course, if it weren't for the amazing choreography by Marshall, the entire audience would have probably been sucked into the energy-draining goo created by the keyboards.