Memo to theater companies specializing in the classics: Take a cue from Marvell Rep. The troupe’s second season doesn’t have a Shakespeare, Chekhov or Shaw in the bunch — just six controversial works that were once “burned and banned.” Like the Mint Theater, another daring company, Marvell realized that other past playwrights are also worthy of attention.
The opener is the rediscovered gem “Professor Bernhardi,” a 100-year-old work by Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler (“La Ronde”) that’s only now receiving its English-language premiere here.
Austria’s censors canceled the inaugural production, and it’s not hard to see why.
Set in 1900, it depicts the firestorm that erupts after a professor (Sam Tsoutsouvas), a Jewish doctor and head of a private teaching hospital, prevents a priest from administering last rites to a young woman dying from a botched abortion. The patient, high on painkillers, has no idea of her condition, and Bernhardi wants to spare her any agitation.
Attacked on all sides, the doctor’s put on trial for the crime of “obstructing religion.”
Clocking in at three hours, Lenny Leibowitz’s production could have used some pruning — and the acting from its 16-person ensemble is uneven, though Tsoutsouvas is outstanding in the title role.
The most surprising thing about it is how caustically funny the play is, concentrating as much on Bernhardi’s prickly, self-defeating personality as on the moral and religious debates arising from his actions.
Among the shows Marvell’s planned for fall are Frank Wedekind’s “Spring’s Awakening” — the play that inspired the musical — and Eugene O’Neill’s recently rediscovered one-act “Exorcism.” Can’t wait.