Joined by a small cadre of adventurous theatrical renegades, Michael Gardner has helped turned Williamsburg's Brick Theater into one of the city's most reliable sources for smart, funny, and surprising performance. Gardner is currently presenting a revival of his 1999 stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, starring Brick co-founder Robert Honeywell as the book's rather tortured main character. Performed in the theater's backstage area, which has been transformed into a book-cluttered, candlelit warren, Gardner gives the audience a full immersion into the tangled mind of Dostoevsky's famous 'Underground Man.' Critic Richard Hinojosa writes: "After being fortunate enough to witness The Brick's production of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground I realized that there was so much that I missed in my reading of it that came to vivid and surprisingly hilarious life when spoken." Notes from Underground continues through March 22nd; the run is mostly sold out but a small number of tickets will be available at the door starting at 7:45 p.m. prior to each performance.
What does this existential novel, published in 1864, have to offer theatergoers in Williamsburg of 2008? One doesn’t conceive of Williamsburg as a hotbed of Dostoevskian archetypes. But the main character’s flights of fancy are especially relevant here, where the yupster real estate explosion continues to disenfranchise the neighborhood without self-reflection. Dostoevsky is, of course, timeless in his depiction of desperation and in the search for meaning in a God-less universe. The onanism of the character, the self-indulgence, the elaborate fictions and philosophies the character proffers to explain his cruelty—these seem more with us than ever.
The Underground Man has a MySpace page – has he made any cool new friends? For several weeks after setting up the page, I was adamant that Underground Man should have no friends on MySpace. Not even Tom. UM is a character who would proudly flaunt his friendlessness. (If only MySpace had an enemies section!) But I finally relented, recently, and he has now begun to accept invitations.
Are you aware of other stage adaptations of Notes from Underground? I’m not. It seems to be a rarely attempted project.
How did the idea to stage this originally come about? The novel suggests these absurd dialogues between the Underground Man, who is writing the book as his memoir, and the readers of the memoir. The readers, he imagines, respond with protest and revulsion to his anti-social pronouncements. The Underground Man delights in these insults. I immediately fell upon the idea of literalizing this dynamic on stage--so that audience members appeared to be heckling the narrator and he would respond in kind. It would be an elaborate symphony of insults, orchestrated by the character to mask his true story from the audience. (The story, despite his intentions, emerges.)
How did you deal with the challenges of adapting this book to the stage? The first half was exceedingly difficult to dramatize. It’s a bilious, rambling philosophical rant. I’ve roughly summarized it in a 12-minute whirlwind overture of sorts. The second half fairly wrote itself. Dostoevsky was a master dramatist. The fun part was creating the environment. Making the audience descend into his “mouse hole,” seating them on piles of his old books and tattered furniture and lighting the entire evening by candlelight. The looks on people’s faces as they realize what they are in for gets me every time.
And why revive the production now after all these years? Over the years, the idea of the show titillated many friends and colleagues who were disappointed they missed it 9 years ago.
I’ve heard the book described as dreary; is that something the production tries to counteract? Really? Dreary? I find it mortifying and heart-wrenching, but never dreary. The one aspect I’ve been particularly pleased to highlight for many fans of the book is how deliriously funny it is.
What responses have you received from people who love the book and saw this stage version? The best compliments have come from Russians, who not only loved the book but know St. Petersburg. They said it perfectly captured both the book and the city. We also had one audience full of NYU students, who apparently knew the book inside & out because they laughed knowingly at all the references. Critics have divided right down the middle: some said it caught the essence of the book beautifully; others said the book couldn’t be adapted to stage.
Please share a brief history of the Brick Theater’s genesis. Robert Honeywell (pictured, right) and I worked in downtown theater for many years, and produced our own plays at other spaces. We got tired of trudging props and set pieces around town, overpaying for rehearsal & performance space, and having limited time to develop shows. We looked for a space for months all over Manhattan and Brooklyn and got lucky enough to have a friend want to get out of his lease at our current space, back in 2002. We grabbed it right away.
Other than Brick productions, what shows have you seen that you liked recently? Because we’ve been ensconced in this production, I haven’t been out to other theater recently. I’m looking forward to catching Cat’s Cradle and Fight Girl Battle World in the next week. Maybe NTUSA’s Don Juan. Tickets for The Sound and The Fury: April Seventh, 1928 go on sale this weekend. I saw a workshop a month or two ago. Unimaginably perfect rendering of the first section of the Faulkner novel. Almost as divine as Gatz, their adaptation of The Great Gatsby. For anyone who isn’t aware of the theater of Elevator Repair Service, all I can say is “what’s wrong with you?”
You have a lot of different production companies passing in and out of the Brick over the years – what’s been the weirdest, funniest and/or most disastrous thing that’s happened? Probably the weirdest, funniest and most disastrous event was when we produced our first summer themed festival, The Hell Festival, back in 2004. It was early in The Brick’s life and we hadn’t yet bought an air conditioner. That proved apt to the festival theme, because audience and critics alike focused, naturally, on the sweltering, hellish conditions in the space. They referred to the space as The Brick Oven. Particular images: Actors in wool 1930s skirts propping them on top of fans to keep their legs cool; audience members pouring out onto the streets after shows, dripping with sweat, looking like Lost survivors. We got a giant AC right after that.
Speaking strictly as an audience member, what are your favorite shows seen at the Brick? Bouffon Glass Menajoree (which won last year’s New York Independent Theater award for Outstanding Production of a Play) was one of my personal faves. It’s like Tennessee Williams being gang-banged. It’s so wrong. In so many ways. It’s getting revived next month at 45 Bleecker.
What’s upcoming at the Brick? Next up at The Brick is Babylon, Babylon by Piper McKenzie productions. The creators describe it as “a full re-creation of the Babylonian Temple of Ishtar in 539 B.C.” How often does that come to Brooklyn?
What’s your favorite restaurant near the theater? The Lazy Catfish. They’re super friendly and they always have good fried finger food available. And they give us discounts during the NY Clown Theater Festival each year.
