Sontag:Reborn, now playing at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival, opens with a twenty-foot-high video of a woman holding a notebook and smoking. We hear the sibilance of the inhale, the crackle of the burning tobacco. The woman stares silently at the audience, blows a puff of smoke, and starts to read.
This initial image of Susan Sontag --- larger than life, aloof, defiant--- fits with preexisting notions of the famous writer and intellectual. The remainder of the 80-minute production, however, does everything possible to reverse that impression.
The show is adapted from Sontag’s diary, which was edited and published by her son, David Rieff, and it reveals Sontag to be a passionate and surprisingly whimsical woman. Her relationsips with women were characterized by a fierce intensity, bordering on obsession. If you’ve ever been madly in love but at the same time wanted to wring that person’s neck, you will be gratified to find your romantic mishaps reflected in this respected literary personage.
Performed by Moe Angelos and directed by Marianne Weems, the play restricts its source to Sontag’s diary, and its scope to her life before age 30. As a result, we see only Sontag’s side of the story, and are left to wonder how these events might appear from another perspective.
But this isn’t as much of a problem as it might seem, because Sontag was so penetratingly introspective. Her unsparing self-criticism seems to predict and disarm against any criticism from others. It’s hard to imagine her ex-husband or ex-lovers leveling attacks against Sontag that she hasn’t already preanswered in her diary.
This is a one-woman show, and the bulk of the action takes place --- appropriately enough for a play about a writer --- at a desk stacked with books. The limited staging and cast puts an emphasis on the diary itself, and even Sontag herself might admit this is a heavy theaterical load for a small notebook to carry.
The focus on text is further underscored by a video projection of written words, snippets from Sontag’s diary, as well as live video of Sontag writing her journal. Meanwhile, the larger-than-life video Sontag from the opening sequence continues to look down, literally, on her youthful counterpart on stage.
The result is a kind of theatrical cubism. Seeing the same image from multiple angles, and seeing the younger Sontag through the eyes of the elder, serve as contrast to the singular perspective of Sontag’s diary. Regardless of one’s opinion about these choices, it cannot be denied that the jumble of images and impressions keeps the eye continually moving, and makes for a lively experience.
Moe Angelos is a strong, confident actor, and she finds just the right combination of strength and vulnerability in her subject. Angelos and Williams successfully mine the acerbic comedy in Sontag’s romantic ups and downs. Simple phrases like “I have an enemy” become, in their capable hands, both funny and revealing of Sontag’s complex character.
In the end, one measure of the success of a play about a famous person is whether you leave more interested in that person than you were before. And on this score the play certainly succeeds: I went home and immediately pulled down my dog-eared copy of Sontag’s first essay collection, “Against Interpretation.” As Sontag herself was known to say, an artist should be judged on her work, not the work of others about her.
Sontag: Reborn
directed by: Marianne Weems
presented by The Builders Association
through January 15th
for more info: http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=469
Cameron Page is a playwright and non-fiction writer. He lives in Crown Heights.
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