Elvis: he's bigger than Bertolt Brecht

It is difficult to understand what inspired David Brind, JE '00, to direct both The Jewish Wife, a drama of a Jewish woman fleeing Hitler's regime in 1935, and Graceland, about two Elvis diehards dueling it out outside the 1982 public opening of the King's mansion, at the same time. Perhaps Brind imagined his own version of Schind-ler's List, set to "Hound Dog." But if you've always felt that Elvis and Hitler don't make compatible bedfellows, you're absolutely right—watching the two infamous men wield their dramatic power back-to-back is painfully bizarre and more than a little unsettling. Luckily for Brind and his cast, however, the delightful performance of Graceland overcomes the tired melodrama of the preceding Wife, leaving the audience grateful that no deeper attempts were made to link the two plays other than their simple juxtaposition.

SARAH ENGLAND/YH Elvis & Jewish wife: odd bedfellows.

The curtain opens first on the Jewish Wife, with the title role played heroically—if just a bit blandly—by Erika Trautman, TC '00. Bertolt Brecht's extremely short play (running time only about half an hour) tells the story of Judith, the German Jewish wife of an Aryan surgeon, who is preparing to flee her home and her life in 1935 Frankfurt. Shouting gems like "Yes, I am angry," Trautman plays well into Brecht's predictable and often stagnant script, producing an equally predictable and stagnant performance. With facial expressions properly tortured and hands properly shaky, Trautman proves that the Holocaust still remains an effective vehicle for achieving dramatic pathos, no matter how cheaply earned. And it is earned cheaply—Brecht does not add much of anything new to the already tired subject, and Trautman, try as she might, does not manage to insert novel insights where there are none. The Jewish Wife may still draw a tear, but it does so only because it exploits an inherently upsetting subject.

A brief intermission physically relocates the scene—and the audience—to the other side of the small Whitney Humanities space, and to the other side of the world, for the June 1982 public opening of Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion, Graceland. Once the audience is able to get past the nagging feeling that it is a little sick to follow the wailing German arias of Nazi Germany with the wails of a gyrating American sex symbol, Graceland quickly proves itself. Written by Ellen Byron, it depicts the changing relationship between the washed-up, middle-aged Elvis maniac, Bev (Annabelle Steinhacker, ES '00) and the troubled teenage Elvis-lover, Rootie (Jessica Hirota, BK '00). For anyone who has ever encountered a real-life Elvis fanatic, Byron's brilliant script and the performances of Steinhacker and Hirota will ring delightfully true. Dressed in an outrageous yellow quilted suit and gravity-defying blond wig, Bev resembles a'70s disco drag queen more than she does an Elvis fan, but somehow she pulls it off convincingly. Hirota similarly plays the Southern belle almost to perfection—beauty-obsessed, insecure, and sporting an almost-flawless Louisiana drawl.

The play immediately launches into an organic and hilarious exchange between the two dissimilar fans as they argue over who should get to enter the mansion first on its opening day. Lines like "Does this look like a Kmart to you?" in reference to Rootie's attempts to compare their situation to opening day at a shopping center keep the dialogue lively. Yet it is not the witty exchanges or the farcical circumstances that make this play so effective. More, it is the unlikely yet convincing friendship that slowly develops between the two women, making what began as a seemingly vacuous comedy end as a tear-jerker. What is amazing is the smoothness of the transition that Steinhacker and Hirota achieve, and the authenticity of the events that unfold. Graceland, unlike The Jewish Wife, is a surprising and deeply satisfying production; it truly does the King justice.

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