In this rarely performed 1975 play by Thomas Bernhard, the aforementioned sleazy and over-the-top president tells his actress mistress, “Politics is the highest form of art, my child.” “The art of acting comes a close second.”
This president is the leader of a small, unnamed European country off the coast of Portugal, hiding from gossips, anarchists, and, after another assassination attempt, from his murderous son. His megalomania has matured at a time when some of our shameless leaders are performing like old troupers.
Relating to: Hugo Weaving: ‘This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done’
Played by Hugo Weaving in the Sydney Theater Company’s co-production with Dublin Gate Theatre, the president is a comically rude man and lover of grand opera, punctuating his self-aggrandizing outbursts with Trump-style hand gestures.
The formidable First Lady, played by Irish actor Olwen Fouéré, claims to love the works of French authors such as Proust and Voltaire, but there are no Enlightenment values as she repeatedly bullies her servant, Mrs. Frolick (Julie Forsyth), a physically funny woman. I am the silent witness of these dictators. The First Lady repeatedly returns to her dark view of the essence of life: “Ambition/torture/hate/that’s all.”
Directed by Irishman Tom Creed, the first half of The President , following its first season in Dublin, sees Fouéré deliver a monologue about the forces arrayed against the incumbent. He’s something of an actor, too, appearing in a children’s play every year and more invested in this year’s production than mourning a newly murdered colonel.
There are humorous interludes about the beloved pet dog, the only creature the First Lady can empathize with, but who suffers collateral damage from an assassin’s bullet. Ms. Frolick nearly steals the show, especially when she stages a gold-framed picture of the late terrier soulfully painted against the sky.
But these two scenes become an endurance test of repeated lines and test the audience’s patience for the narrative. Almost everything in this game either happened before the present or is imagined in the future. But there is little dramatic or comedic payoff in these two scenes, and the same results can be achieved in half the running time.
While Fouéré’s speech ultimately becomes a voluminous aria of self-obsession, his delivery is tame, especially in the beginning. Perhaps this is intended to convey the First Lady’s increasing insanity and detachment from reality, but it’s hard to relate to that.
Bernhard was born in the Netherlands in 1931, but was taken to Bavaria by his Austrian mother during Nazi rule in 1937 and was forced to join the Hitler Youth. He directly experienced Goebbels’ propaganda, which fueled writings expressing his discontent with cowardly autocrats and their supporters.
English translator Gitta Honegger treats criticisms of repetition in her writings as “a conscious technique that defines language as a system of quotations.” If we don’t quote others, we quote ourselves. When we speak, we become imitators…” In the preface to his translation, he writes that Bernhard’s agenda was “to propose a language structure disconnected from its origin in order to exclude the possibility of expressing spontaneous, original thought.”
But this convoluted, inadequate approach to language can sometimes be lethal. Of course, Bernhard’s darkly humorous perspective and repeated idioms are reminiscent of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or Happy Days, but these plays are more successful as timeless comedies that explore the absurdity of life because we find ourselves in Beckett’s ordinary characters, fighting cheerfully despite the futility we can see. from their efforts.
In a work marked by political satire, we are looking more for reflections of our time, for our concerns about the future of democracy to be even more evident. In fact, when Weaving’s president talks about a “great paper conspiracy/against us/all the newspapers/every single one of them,” we think of a US political hopeful recycling cries of “witch hunt”. to reckon with — but we already encounter this self-serving satire every day in our news cycle.
The newspaper emphasis on The President marks its era. This era deserves a political satire that addresses, for example, the role of social media and partisan media in spreading disinformation, our growing dystopia racked by irreconcilable division.
In the third scene, Bernhard’s repetitions become more meaningful after the interval, as Weaving and his mistress drink champagne at their retreat in Portugal. Drunk people often repeat themselves aggressively, making for the most comically successful scene. The fourth scene, in which the president blathers on to his Portuguese hosts, adds little dramatically or narratively to what has gone before.
The final, brief fifth scene involves an audience participation trick that I won’t spoil here, but it was something Bernhard didn’t foresee in his script, which suggests Creed didn’t rely on the original ending.
Go watch The President to see Weaving’s hilarious and moving performance, Forsyth’s physically comical demeanor, and Fouéré’s acting athleticism. But again and again you will have to endure the emptiness of wandering bullies – of course this is just a revelation for those who turn off the news.