La Bête

Aight.  So here's what's up.  Last night, I decided to postpone studying for one night (oh, the horror!), bought a $25 student ticket, and saw La Bête at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway.

Everyone who had seen it informed me that Valere, played by my new obsession Mark Rylance, monologues a lot.  And I heard it had something to do with fools?  But that's about all I knew.

Here's what I also found out:  the whole play is entirely in verse.  As in, the damn thing rhymed.  Bizarre?  Yes.  Incredible?  Absolutely.  I didn't notice it at first, but it somehow crept its way into the forefront, simultaneously shocking us and making us laugh.  Who the hell wants to sit through an entire play of rhyming couplets?  Whenever I think of rhymes, I think of kids' poems (I used to be an incredible writer of rhyming poetry, by the way), or "Roses are red" or something like that.  Instead, it added this quirky mixed layer of communication and miscommunication (because apparently Valere can never quite fully quote Cicero).  It took the common idea of verse as dense and Shakespearean, and turned it into a comical, contemporary mode of speaking.

Anyway, La Bête is about a playwright and actor named Elomire (played by Niles from Frasier), who just found out that The Princess (Joanna Lumley) is requiring him to begin working with a street performer named Valere.  But Valere isn't just any old street peformer.  He has hillbilly teeth, balding mini dredlocks, a Number Devil mustache, a Captain Jack Sparrow swagger, and the worst short-term memory ever seen.  And he talks.  He talks a lot.

In fact, after the opening ten minutes, Rylance talks for an uninterrupted 40-45 minutes.  Straight.  Do you understand how amazing that is?  THIS MAN IS SPEAKING AND LITERALLY HOLDS OUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION FOR ALMOST AN HOUR.  If this were any other actor, the audience would be bored by minute 5.  But Rylance, supported by an amazing script by David Hirson, manages to captivate us.  He eats cantaloupe, while still talking.  He poops (only slightly) offstage, while still talking.  He pounds wine like a champ, while still talking.  He sings a slightly Yiddish sounding diddy, while still talking.  He insults vinaigrette, a hunchback, a skull.  He calls words "verbobo" and chairs "Francesca."  He talks and talks and twitches his face and talks and laughs in this charmingly buffoon-y way, and never loses us for a single second.  I am so in love with this totally horrid character, it's unbelievable.  Here is when Valere first comes onstage (aka when he begins his 45 minute speech): VIDEO!

The best and worst part of La Bête, however, IS Rylance's monologue.  It's so phenomenal, that when it concludes (approx. 50-55 minutes into the 1:45 minute play), nothing else can compete with it.  Sure, Niles was good at reacting to the ridiculousness of Valere, but that was all there was to him (plus, his character just wasn't well developed -- in the final conflict in the story we can never really believe his point of view, mainly because he never gets a chance to develop into a real character to be reckoned with).  Similarly, Lumley's Princess could have been very, very funny (she enters from a beam of light, with gold glitter flying around her), but she can never begin to compete with Rylance.  The actual conflict, the debate between entertainment for entertainment's sake (Valere) vs. educational works that do not degrade the cultural landscape (Elomire), seems too harried and dense for the joviality of Valere and the annoyance of Elomire.  We are left hanging at the end.

But who cares?  Rylance is absolutely phenomenal.  His monologue is unlike anything I've ever heard or seen.  Do yourself a favor.  Buy the ticket, see the show, and relish those 45 minutes.  You will be in awe.

-Lida