Entertainment

THERE’S LOTS OF LIFE IN ‘VENICE’

DEATH IN VENICE

The Manhattan Ensemble Theater, 55 Mercer St. Through June 30. Telecharge, (212) 239-6200.

A BRILLIANT and gripping dramatization of Thomas Mann’s 1910 “Death in Venice” is being staged by Giles Havergal at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater.

Havergal – the play’s only actor as well as its director – uses Robert David MacDonald’s intelligent adaptation of David Luke’s superb translation.

The stage is simple and symbolic: a plate of strawberries on a column, a chair at a typewriter and a bust of a man we learn is a deceased writer.

The tale of the writer’s visit to Venice is told at first by Havergal as a third-person narrator, but he swiftly becomes the writer, Gustav von Aschenbach – a persnickety widower who is determined to treat himself to a holiday in Venice.

Along the way he encounters unsettling apparitions – a creepy man at a cemetery, a freakish creature on the boat, a threatening gondolier. Havergal, as Aschenbach, enacts them all.

The atmosphere in Venice is subtly but powerfully evoked by the suggestion of water and light. Venice is embodied by two things: the beautiful youth, Tadzio, and the plague.

Tadzio is never seen – he is merely as an object of Aschenbach’s confused yearning. As for the plague – sinister musicians whisper of it, compliant barbers deny it and honest bankers tell the true story.

Aschenbach deliriously pursues the handsome boy. And in a marvelous moment, he puts makeup on his own funeral mask. Disaster looms.

It’s an exciting version, faithful to the themes of the parable and masterfully performed.