You’ve never seen anything like it. You’ve never seen anything like David Greenspan’s solo presentation of Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts. Okay, you may think you have. You may have seen two anythings like it – Greenspan’s solo presentations of Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude and Barry Connors’ The Patsy.
Nonetheless, you’ve still never seen anything like it. O’Neill and Connors were dealing with characters and storylines, all the trappings of standard dramatic works. Greenspan may have been playing all the parts – even improving the long, long, two-part, nine-act O’Neill for reasons not pertinent here – but you still had no trouble following along. Okay, maybe a little trouble with the O’Neill.
That’s the difference – the vast difference – here. The first two of Greenspan’s solo trilogy deal with linear works. Stein’s deals with something so aligned with her passion for wordplay that she’s as far from linear than the off-ramp nonlinear traffic can allow.
This Four Saints in Three Acts is also, by the way, a long stone’s throw from Stein’s original intent, a lengthy opera with Virgil Thomson’s music, written in 1928 and not premiered until 1934 in Hartford, Connecticut, when directed by John Houseman with Rouben Ter-Arutunian‘s sets.
Greenspan does the script in 90 minutes on a simple and quite beautiful Yuki Nakase Link set. He enters a generous space bordered on three sides by high white curtains and steps onto a boxing-ring-sized stage, the floor of which has been painted to resemble a Persian rug.
He dips into Stein’s poetry. Or is it prose? It’s clear the subject is what the literary idol and salon-hostess promises with her title. Or does she blithely break her promise? While there are some saints more prominent than others – Saint Teresa, Saint Ignatius, Saint Cecile, Saint Gervais – Stein mentions more. Some say they are upwards of 30, but who’s counting? Surely not the erstwhile librettist.
And what about the acts? Are there three? No, there are at least four with a hastily mentioned possibility of a fifth. As for the scenes in each act: there are nine or 10 or whatever.
Yes, along with her tossing words around like so many juggled bowling pins, Stein is having something of a sophisticated joke with, and on, language. And to prove that a reviewer does feel an obligation to quote, if only briefly, from the text.
A reviewer’s worry is, however, that quotes may risk dampening readers’ enthusiasm. Perhaps it’s helpful to suggest that Stein’s repeated references to saints Teresa, Teresa II, Ignatius, Cecile, Gervais, Settlement, et al, doesn’t exactly resemble stuttering. It’s more as if the speaker is attempting to find the precisely correct way to express the mounting thoughts.
Granted, Stein does make the occasional straightforward(?) remark, such as “He asked for a distant magpie” or “Who made them see Saturday?” (Incidentally, Ernest Hemingway was a frequent guest at Stein’s Paris gatherings. Are there any two writers in literary annals more unalike than those two?)
Another way of suggesting Stein’s effect is comparing it to Philip Glass’s minimalism. (Put Thomson aside for the moment). Stein’s words like Glass’s notes recur, shifting every so slightly over the text’s successive measures.
Of course, it’s what Greenspan makes of Stein’s words that raises this Four Saints in Three Acts to brilliance and adds to his long and celebrated career list as well as placing him in his own performance-artist category. He’s immeasurably aided by Ken Rus Schmoll, who directs as the other half of a now established and tightly knit collaboration.
When Greenspan – medium height, fit, lithe – begins, he stands at the center of the stage, arms constantly moving. Many of the gestures are repeated and specific. Saint Teresa holds her hands as if praying. Saint Gervais puts fists one atop the other, as if hefting a bundle.
Though Greenspan remains in that spot – and under Link’s unchanging lights – for a while, he eventually begins to travel around the stage, assuming different poses, kneeling once, occasionally bowing as if in the presence of the saints he’s celebrating. Eventually, his steps take on the air of a dance to the gathering rhythm and music of Stein’s words.
And yet, skeptical readers will still want to get an idea of some of Stein’s prosaic poetry or poetic prose. All right, here’s a delightful sample:
Pigeons on the grass alas
Pigeons on the grass alas
Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass.
Pigeons.
large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas
pigeons on the grass.
If they were not pigeons what were they.
Oh no, no backing off now. If you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound. David Greenspan always is.
Four Saints in Three Acts opened September 19, 2022, at Target Margin Theater (Brooklyn) and runs through October 9. Tickets and information: lortel.org
