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Chaste
In 1882, an emotionally unstable Friedrich Nietzsche joined philosopher Paul Ree and the 21-year-old muse and writer Louise (Lou) Salomé in their plans to form an academic commune, a trinity devoted to intellect at the expense of eros. Had this commune come to be, it may have led to an explosion of creativity for the three thinkers. On the other hand, it may have resulted in the drawn-out sexual torture of the thirtysomething philosophers by Salome’s self-mythologizing femme fatale. Prestininzi’s cruelly funny new play places its bets in an imagining of the brief life of a ménage that never was.
The lofty-minded trio, plus Nietzsche’s castrating sister Elizabeth, manhandles each other across the blank surfaces of Joseph Riley’s fittingly difficult set, suited to expending lots of energy and getting nowhere. As Lou, Sarah Tolan Mee imbues her character’s didactic feminism with a narcissist’s consuming vivacity, and Antonio Brunetti’s pathetic genius Nietzsche has the haunted hopefulness of a losing gambler. Their commune’s sexless setup naturally invites sexual obsession, which manifests itself in bouts of orgasmic automatic writing, repeated marriage proposals (Nietzsche’s) and, finally, consummation (not Nietzsche’s). Stylistic gambles such as a dream sequence that mashes up fairy tales, verse and violence work thanks to Hendrickson’s gutsy direction, which keeps the comedy a step below manic. The overlong second act, however, offers an unnecessarily ample epilogue to the trinity’s disintegration, sacrificing some of the play’s dark energy in an attempt to shade its characters with more human strokes. Everything about this production is better when refusing to compromise.
