'Blue Flower' Beleaguered by Obscurantism

Green light spilling onto the stage and an occasional bird song evoke an idyllic day in New York City’s Central Park in 1955. A man called Max (Daniel Jenkins), shuffles through a thick scrapbook, muttering in a strange language. Is it German? Hungarian? Actually it’s “Maxperanto,” an invented language specific to him—emblematic of both the play’s Dadaist artistic influences and its often frustrating obscurantism. Within moments Max is dead of a heart attack. A narrator, the Fairytale Man (Tom Nelis), steps forward to lead us through a flashback of Max’s life from birth to death.

“The Blue Flower,” co-created by Ruth and Jim Bauer, is a musical play showing until January 8 at the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center. The Bauers are trained in visual art and music, respectively, and “The Blue Flower” is quite obviously the product of an artist and a composer/songwriter. Driven by song and arresting images, the production often loses its own plot in the profusion of visual details and wild movement on stage.

The narrative takes place between 1889 and 1955, the dates of Max’s birth and death. Max was an artist and a witness of the Belle Epoque, World War I, the Weimar Period, and World War II and its aftermath. Capturing the spirit of all these ages in a coherent manner is an ambitious project—perhaps too ambitious. Regardless, the Bauers chose Dada as the rather disunifying theme to unite all. Max is inspired by the artist Max Beckmann. His best friend is Franz (Lucas Kavner), inspired by the German Expressionist Franz Marc, and he falls in love with two women: Hannah (Meghan McGeary), inspired by the Dadaist Hannah Höch, and Maria (Teal Wicks), inspired by Marie Curie.

Over the course of this period, art school friends Franz and Max go to Paris, where they both fall in love with the scientist Maria. Maria reciprocates Franz’s affection, and all is well until World War I begins. Franz enlists, despite Maria's protestations, and Max becomes a war correspondent. On a break in Zurich, the three friends reunite and encounter Hannah at one of her Dadaist performances. From there, the pressures and caprices of war—as well as romantic conflict—conspire to tear the four apart as the story continues through two World Wars and across multiple continents.

Despite the prolonged timeline of the play, it makes no concessions for aging: each character appears to be as old as they were when they died. Thus, Jenkins looks approximately 50 even while portraying his much younger self, while the baby-faced Kavner could easily be Max’s son. This bizarre dynamic is distracting when the friends compete with each other for Maria. When complemented by McGeary, however, Jenkins comes to life. Her verve and tightly wound energy contrast well with his more reserved mannerisms. They have a charming chemistry, especially in songs like “Eyes and Bones.”

The strengths of “The Blue Flower” are its vocals and music. The production is lyrically and musically experimental: in a number entitled “Puke” Hannah sings “I can’t possibly eat as much as I’d like to puke / into the shiny boots of jingoes making news.” Maria gets to sing the most traditional number, “Eiffel Tower.” Wicks has a lovely voice and quiet intensity; she conveys a certain pathos as she sings about a broken heart from the top of the Eiffel Tower after the end of World War I. Though “The Blue Flower” is inspired by the Dadaist movement, the band—named the “Weimarband”—inflects their music with blues and American western influences. The main motifs of their music are echoed in projected images, including clips of cowboys riding across empty plains and train tracks as seen from moving carriages. These images also serve to clarify the context and mood of the sometimes confusing plot.

The play’s frustrating ambiguities are exemplified in a climactic segment depicting the breakdown of Max and Hannah’s relationship. In an entirely wordless, five-minute scene, Max follows Maria from a wild party, supposedly to help her hang up some of Franz’s paintings. Hannah, left on her own, gets into a physical fight with the host of the party and his two diabolic minions. Eventually, Hannah escapes and collapses at home, and when Max returns, she dramatically packs up her suitcase and leaves, looking at him reproachfully.

The Bauers leave the scene open for interpretation; while it is one of the more visually compelling moments of the play, sometimes beauty must be sacrificed for clarity. In this case, where three of the main characters’ lives have just been so dramatically affected, some explanation seems necessary. This lack is especially frustrating when the plot exposition happily lingers on extraneous details, such as Max’s retaliatory response—“veni vidi vici”—to classmates who teased him at a young age. “The Blue Flower” could use more of the decisiveness encapsulated in that phrase, and less of the “Maxperanto” into which it eventually devolves.

—Staff writer Catherine A. Morris can be reached at morris6@fas.harvard.edu.