Detestable Madness Shines Spotlight on Problems in Society
Paul Brissett
Duluth News Tribune
March 12, 2015
Detestable Madness is two 1,000-year-old scripts retooled to cast a harsh light on two issues, one ancient, the other modern. Jenna Soleo-Shanks, UMD assistant professor of theater, has adapted two plays about women by a woman known today only as Hrotsvit, who lived in a 10th century religious cloister and wrote plays to not only entertain but enlighten. In the production that opened Thursday at UMD’s Marshall Performing Arts Center, she addresses violence against women in Act I and the objectification of women in Act II. The acts have different characters but played by the same excellent cast of 10.
Curtis Phillips’ spare but dramatic set adapts to either story: a set of black-framed hollow cubes and scarlet drapes hanging at each corner of the in-the-round space. Act I opens with a party, music from the movie “Saturday Night Fever” playing. In antique language, punctuated by the occasional vulgarity, Callimachus (played with consummate malevolence by Erik Meixelsperger) tells his friends of his love for Drusiana (Mikaela Kurpierz). But when — abandoning the old-fashioned speech — he approaches her, she rebuffs him harshly.
As the night wears on, she becomes drunk and he slips from obsession to lustful rage until, after she’s passed out, he rapes her as a friend videotapes the assault and lurid Twitter messages about an actual rape in Ohio in 2012 scroll on the drapes. Soleo-Shanks uses more sheets of red to dramatize the action throughout both acts, but they’re especially effective in the rape scene, which is shocking without being graphic.
In Act II, Sapientia (played by Colleen Lafeber as a force of nature) storms into a corporate meeting to demand that her three daughters, all of whom have “IT,” be turned into celebrities ala Honey Boo Boo and the Kardashian sisters. She sings of “capitalistic exploitation, patriarchal standards” to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from the movie “Mary Poppins.”
The act opens funnier than Act I, but slides steadily to a heartbroken mother’s lament for her lost children. Much of the credit for the effectiveness of the descent goes to sound designer Nick Mrozek, who layers a spooky, echo-y version of “My Favorite Things” with the beeps of a heart monitor during a scene of mock cosmetic surgery.
Soleo-Shanks’ creativity in accomplishing what Hrotsvit says in her introduction is her goal — to shine a spotlight on the problems of her society — is equaled only by the grace with which she deploys modern music and technology to help do so 10 centuries later. Detestable Madness is a play with a message, one unfortunately that probably will not be heard by those who most need to hear it, people — mostly but not exclusively men — who are likelier to be found in the crowd at a dog fight than in the audience at the theater.
