Beholder

Paula Modersohn-Becker’s no-frills paintings of dour-looking Germans invariably inspire mixed reviews. Through vivid palettes and generalizing brushstrokes, the artist outlined blurry, expressionistic worlds more akin to Van Gogh anxiety dreams than Monet fantasyscapes. Vibrant, defiant and dense, her paintings scream “acquired taste.”

The same applies to Trap Door’s bold and beguiling new production, based on the artist’s life. Prestininzi’s script charts the testy waters of isolation and intimacy Paula must navigate in her volatile relationships with poet Rainer Maria Rilke, his grouchy wife, Clara, and Paula’s own blah husband, Otto. Any play about turn-of-the-century German geniuses requires some easing into. But Prestininzi hits the ground running: Barely five minutes in, Rainer (John Kahara) is spouting obscure excerpts from his poem “Requiem for a Friend,” while Paula (Betsy Zajko) sprints hyperactively around the stage, pretending to paint.

Grit your teeth through these boggling opening moments, and the play quickly hits its stride. The audience acclimates, and the actors engage. Zajko in particular navigates the script’s sophisticated terrain with striking finesse, fully relaxing into Paula’s entrancing shell several scenes in, as she and Rainer cozy up in the German countryside. As the play unfolds, Zajko eschews both feminine convention and straightforward defiance of that convention to paint a fierce, brassy and thoroughly convincing portrait of a true revolutionary.

Though Beholder is by no means everyone’s cup of tea, those who hold Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet close to their hearts will find sticking through the show’s obscure beginnings worthwhile. Strong performances and crisp, mercifully humorous writing make this uncompromising play a taste worth cultivating.