No curtains. No backstage. No suspension of disbelief. This is playwright Bertolt Brecht’s recipe for theater, and the U department of theater has got it right with “Happy End.”
A “melodrama with songs,” this comedic early 1920s musical about a Salvation Army worker who falls in love with a lead Chicago gangster she is trying to reform was written by Brecht in 1929 and features music from Kurt Weill and Elisabeth Hauptmann, also known by her pseudonym, Dorothy Lang.
Director Sarah Shippobotham has created a work that stays true to the Verfremdungseffekt — Brecht’s guiding principle of the “alienation effect,” in which the audience is constantly aware of the fact that they are in a theater watching actors perform a play.
This approach is in opposition to that of most drama and mainstream musicals, which strive to make the audience forget where they really are as they are taken into the false reality of the characters on stage.
The uncommon theatrical magic of “Happy End” begins the moment the audience arrives. One notices a barren stage lacking any curtains or wings, framed by an assortment of set and prop pieces stowed upstage.
Also, toward the back of the playing space are the musicians and their instruments, in full view of the audience.
Stage lights are unapologetically set up near the sides of the stage and make no attempt at disguise or even hint at camouflage.
Above the black box studio are production staff and crew members in a fully lighted booth that appears to hover over the stage.
There is no one on stage yet — save the occasional crew member that casually strolls across from one side to the next — but the actors are anything but out of sight.
Actor Training Program seniors Andrew Abbott and Aaron Anderson, who play Jimmy Dexter — The Reverend — and Captain Hannibal Jackson, respectively, sit amongst the audience and mingle with the theater patrons as themselves. If questioned what characters they are playing in the show, they give the simple reply of their first name, implying they are not anyone but themselves.
As other cast members pass through a hallway adjacent to the stage, fellow ATP senior Stefanie Londino, who plays The Lady in Grey, otherwise referred to as “The Fly,” pops her head around the open door and blatantly peeks out at the audience.
If Brecht wanted to isolate his stories from the temporary make-believe worlds that other plays and musicals were safely presented in, he would give a nod of approval to the set up of this production.
With the entire cast and production team working to cohesively strip “Happy End” of all fantastical theatrical conventions, audiences are given an opportunity to experience a new form of theater.
Given a musical that refuses to be anything but a musical — a group of performers presenting a collection of song, dance and dialogue — that puts the typically hidden tools of production on display, that avoids realism as a means of escapism, inevitably begs the question as to why the show is being performed at all.
If theater patrons are not expected to buy into a fabricated version of life, immersed in the journeys of made-up people as we leave behind and forget our own, then what are we as audience members supposed to get out of this foreign type of theater?
If your mind is turned on enough to ponder the answer to this question, then you’re already getting it.
By baring it all on stage, Brecht’s work presents situations and characters that offer audiences a mirror-image stimulus for social change — and yes, this one offers a “happy end.”
What: “Happy End”Who: U Department of TheatreWhen: Continues now through Oct. 7Where: Studio 115, in Performing Arts BuildingWhat time: Thursday-Saturday @ 7:30 p.m., matinees Saturday and Sunday @ 2:00 p.m.Tickets: Kingsbury Hall Ticket Office (801-581-7100, www.kingtix.com or at the door)How much: $9 General admission; $7 University staff; $5 Students