Program note:
Michael von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboards
Written by Jennifer Schlueter
This note ran in the program for The Ohio State University’s producton of the play in October 2018.
Michael von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboards seems, at first blush, to have an inarguably generous message at its core: tolerance and love for all. When the play was first produced at the Humana Festival, in 2012, we were four years into the Obama presidency; we don’t know about you, but we were feeling optimistic. We thought we saw a changed world order, and we were ready for a dark comedy about an undead medieval cannibal having a change of heart.
Six years later—with the revelations of #metoo and the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings as fresh wounds—this play feels politically naïve, and maybe even blind on issues of gender and sexuality. We’d be lying if we said that staging the moments of violence against women in this play weren’t horrifying. What’s the comedy there, we wondered? And to what end?
We started to see the play differently when we looked at it through the eyes of the Chorus of the Recently Eaten. With Kotis’s enthusiastic blessing, in this production we added a group of seven ghouls to the core cast of seven. The Chorus, for us, are Michael’s crimes made manifest. They don’t haunt him, because he is pretty blissfully unaware of them. But you see them intersecting his world—and hear them, as they sing pieces from the They Might Be Giants songbook. Embodying TMBG’s jaunty, sinister surreality, our Chorus is a kind of Brechtian device bridging the play and the present. They allow us, we hope, to step back from the narrative of Kotis’s play to better evaluate what it means for men to see women as meat, for cultural and religious bias to go unquestioned, and for violence to be registered as a simple fact of life.
Six years later—with the revelations of #metoo and the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings as fresh wounds—this play feels politically naïve, and maybe even blind on issues of gender and sexuality. We’d be lying if we said that staging the moments of violence against women in this play weren’t horrifying. What’s the comedy there, we wondered? And to what end?
We started to see the play differently when we looked at it through the eyes of the Chorus of the Recently Eaten. With Kotis’s enthusiastic blessing, in this production we added a group of seven ghouls to the core cast of seven. The Chorus, for us, are Michael’s crimes made manifest. They don’t haunt him, because he is pretty blissfully unaware of them. But you see them intersecting his world—and hear them, as they sing pieces from the They Might Be Giants songbook. Embodying TMBG’s jaunty, sinister surreality, our Chorus is a kind of Brechtian device bridging the play and the present. They allow us, we hope, to step back from the narrative of Kotis’s play to better evaluate what it means for men to see women as meat, for cultural and religious bias to go unquestioned, and for violence to be registered as a simple fact of life.
With the integration of the Chorus of the Recently Eaten, our Michael von Siebenburg has moved closer to allegory than dark comedy. This particular production of this play is about ancient, white, ostensibly Christian men who are, behind their charm, actual monsters—monsters who, to prolong their own lives, consume women. These men appall us, and we welcome the play’s invitation to laugh at them. Maybe, then, this production is actually a terrifyingly true bedtime story for our present moment, reminding us that monstrous men are everywhere, and many of them escape punishment for their actions.
Yet, the play seems, in some lights, to hope that you forgive these monsters. After all, Michael von Siebenburg begins to, as he says “figure things out,” and feel a little guilt over his centuries of crimes. Is that enough? Should we forgive him? Is love all we need? You have to decide for yourselves. For us, though, we’re with Sammy: “[N]o redemption. Not for [them].”
Yet, the play seems, in some lights, to hope that you forgive these monsters. After all, Michael von Siebenburg begins to, as he says “figure things out,” and feel a little guilt over his centuries of crimes. Is that enough? Should we forgive him? Is love all we need? You have to decide for yourselves. For us, though, we’re with Sammy: “[N]o redemption. Not for [them].”
Songs from They Might Be Giants
- McCafferty’s Bib
- Turn Around
- Yeh Yeh
- Cloissone
- I Haven’t Seen You In Forever
- Oh You Did
- Exquisite Dead Guy
- End of the Tour
- Istanbul
Setting
Michael’s apartment in a major American city.
A loading dock of an office building in that same city.
A battlefield circa 1453, just outside Constantinople.
Purgatory.
This theatre.
This performance runs 90 minutes with no intermission.