fernando krapp wrote me this letter

Fernando Krapp wrote me this letter is an intriguing title for a play, made even more intriguing by the subtitle: An Attempt at the Truth.

So it was with some sort of curiosity that I entered the theatre. Curious to see what it was to be about, this contemporary German play by Tankred Dorst (born in 1925) based on a novella by Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) and translated by the Canadian French director Matthew Jocelyn. In the Globe and Mail, Jocelyn states: “I was at my favourite theatre bookstore in Paris and picked up the script. The first line of the play is: Fernando Krapp wrote me this letter. I thought how great it was to see something so straightforward and so direct, without any prelude, without any preamble.. I love the frankness and the bluntness of Tankred Dorst’s writing”. The script does render the simplicity of the narrative; as for the cast, it is not always at the level. The triangle Julia (Ngozi Paul), Fernando Krapp (Ashley Wright) and the Count (Ryan Hollyman) looks awkward as wife, husband and desired lover, especially when it comes to using such a word as “neurasthenic”, for instance. It looks like the translation doesn’t quite fit the contemporary setting of the play, the no time, no exact location that is meant to illustrate the reality of our days, be it in Europe or North America.

Scene from "Fernando Krapp.."

The play is short, written to be performed in one act, but it is full of emotion, images, ideas that sustain the narrative flow. When a mysterious millionaire writes her a letter calling her the most beautiful girl in the city and vowing to marry her, Julia is deeply upset. They marry, but later when rumours and accusations of infidelity start to come up, both Julia and Fernando must face the facts in an attempt to separate reality from fantasy. The play reveals some bold questions on the human nature: what is the nature of love? And what connection between love and power? What about fidelity and insanity and the couple? The revolving stage is a graceful way of passing from one scene to another, from the city to the countryside. Smooth changes reveal, as words unveil the characters and their struggle between what’s real and delusional.

During Fernando Krapp, I often felt my mind wandering. Fortunately, I was always pulled back by something visually different, either the actors doing clownish moves or by a vibrant piece of music, or by lighting or the stage slowly moving. In spite of my distraction, I was still aware that the play was raising issues about relationships we have with our own emotions, with power, how our lives are constant negotiations between our desire for love and power, and how we are split between conveniences and true feelings. Also, how we get involved in situations that are going to reflect our longing and desires and obsessions. And how we can be surprised by the mistakes we make in terms of our choices. All along the play, these were the tensions the characters were facing; tensions that bridged with my own. In fact, I like the metaphor of theatre as dialogue, some kind of bridge between artists and the public. Things happen, something is going on on stage and in the heads of the people in the audience; a string ties them for a short while and incites them to think; in the same time and separately; during the show or afterwards.

I liked the subtitle of the play: an attempt at the truth. It’s the idea of the attempt that got me, this idea that we can never touch upon truth. The truth is always conditioned by our point of view and perception on reality; and this perception is conditioned by desire. And these layers are thought provoking. After all, there are good parts in Fernando Krapp (unlike the crappy.. name.. of the character, that is a bit crappy), funny moments too. I believe I mostly enjoyed the deliciously simplified, direct manner in which different human issues were dealt with.