CASIMIR AND CAROLINE
THE HOWLAND COMPANY
CUSHMAN COLLECTED

Odon von Horvath’s Casimir and Caroline, given its North American premiere by the small independent Howland Company in the small studio space at Crowsnest, is the biggest play in Toronto.

Horvath, brilliant Austro-Hungarian, was one of the many writers who fled Europe for America after Hitler took power. Like his contemporary, Bertolt Brecht, he fetched up in Hollywood. The two men were friends, in an edgy sort of way, though they didn’t have too much in common aesthetically or temperamentally. As Horvath himself said “Brecht always liked people to be aware that they were in a theatre. I said to him, more than once, but Brecht, what makes you think they think they’re anywhere else? But he had a way of not answering questions he didn’t approve of.”

The preceding paragraph is pure fabrication, all but the first sentence and even that is only partially true. Horvath never did emigrate to the U.S.; he only got as far as Paris where, while sheltering from the rain, he was fatally struck on the head, by the falling branch of a chestnut tree. The lines I’ve quoted are counter-factual, taken from Tales from Hollywood, a delightful play by the English playwright Christopher Hampton about what might have happened had Horvath made it to the Los Angeles émigré colony. Hampton was already Horvath’s principal emissary to the English-speaking world, through having translated his Tales from the Vienna Woods, the only Horvath play to have established much of a presence in the British and American theatre and one whose title obviously inspired his own.

Both those Tales were sometime ago now, the Woods translation in the 70s, the Hollywood play in the early 80s. We haven’t seen much of Horvath since. In Germany, though, he‘s been a continuing presence, and a stimulating one.  Years ago, Peter Handke, the Austrian novelist and playwright, wrote an article boldly entitled “Horvath is better than Brecht”. He was right. Brecht wrote as if he knew all the answers; Horvath posed questions. Brecht was self-admiringly tough; Horvath was compassionately hard. Brecht toed a party line; Horvath toed nobody’s. Brecht could be ponderously ironic; Horvath was wry, sometimes despairingly so. His death had a serio-comic appropriateness.     

His play Casimir and Caroline was first staged in 1932, at the height – or in the depths – of the Depression. It’s now being given its North American premiere. It has however, according to its Canadian translator Holger Syme, been ubiquitous in the German-speaking theatre ever since the more recent Great Recession. That makes sense; it’s a play about people who have either lost their jobs or live in fear of doing so. The version on show here is an adaptation, updated, relocated, and attributed to Syme himself, the director Paolo Santalucia, and the Howland Company, though whether that last credit refers to the actors or the organisation is anybody’s guess. It seems to be a very free adaptation; at least I doubt that the characters in the original spent as much time as the ones here brandishing their smartphones. And these phones aren’t just atmospheric accoutrements. They play a vital role, indeed several vital roles, in the action. I can’t help wondering how Horvath managed to develop his plot without them.

Actually there’s a part of me that would have liked to see the play left in its original time and place; there’s a real theatrical appeal in being taken into another world, and seeing for ourselves how or whether it relates to our own. But I can’t get too worked up about it, as the production here works triumphantly. There is still a perceptibly great dramatist behind it. Like all the best theatre, it works on two levels. It’s realistically convincing as story, but beneath each believable exchange is the power and the inevitability of myth. It’s also, from time to time, very funny: fiercely so.

We’re at an office party on a Toronto rooftop; at least that’s what Ken MacKenzie’s set conveyed to me. All the characters are company employees, current or recent. Casimir is a driver, or was; he’s just been fired. But he’s come along to please his fiancee Caroline, though she doesn’t seem that much into him anymore. She spends what seems to Casimir an unwarranted amount of time with an amiable guy named Sanders, from the department of men’s clothing. (This must be a really big company.) She also attracts the attention of Rankin, top man at the office, who is used to getting what he wants and will happily humiliate anyone who stands in his way, especially Sanders; he hardly notices Casimir, conceivably because he has only been accustomed to looking at the back of his chauffeur’s head. But even Rankin is not invulnerable, as is signalled by the icy advent of Shira, from high up in the firm’s Montreal HQ. And you thought – he himself thought – that Rankin was a hard nut. Compared to Shira, he’s a pussycat.

The characters tend, in fact, to come in matched pairs of tough and tender or tough and tougher. There’s Mary, a shy secretary desperate to make a good impression, and her friend Ellie who enjoys seeing her fail. There’s Casimir’s buddy Frank who prides himself on his cynicism and has the criminal tendencies to prove it, and there’s Frank’s girlfriend Liz whom one might be tempted to be call long-suffering, except that she’s quietly stronger than he is. She may be the play’s nearest approach to a moral voice; at any rate she has the last word.

The play’s narrative hinge is the downfall of Rankin, ejected from the company when his computer is found to contain a chart ranking (aha!) the sexual availability of the women in his employ. (Again one wonders what the 1930s Viennese equivalent of this may have been.) He spends much of the rest of the evening trying to prove, if only to himself, that his charms, and thus his powers, have not deserted him. James Graham is sickeningly convincing when in his glory, even more so when trying to climb out of his self-dug abyss, and quite spectacular in what comes between: a meltdown when trying to deliver a long free-associating apologia that veers hectically between self-abasement and self-exculpation. The phrasing and pacing of this speech are virtuoso accomplishments as is its writing, by whichever person of combination of persons may be responsible. You may even find yourself feeling sorry for Rankin, though the feeling is unlikely to last.               

There is a similar skilled ambiguity to Alexander Crowther’s Casimir, always threatening to leave, always coming back; and, to some extent, to Hallie Seline’s Caroline, never quite sure of how much she relishes her freedom. Michael Ayres’ all-obliging Saunders is fine, as is his polar opposite, Cameron Laurie’s frankly abrasive Frank; Caroline Toal’s Liz is more than fine, especially towards the end. The play’s most wrenching scene – the extreme encounter between them that’s got and them that’s not - comes when its two extremes meet: when Veronica Hortiguela’s Mary drags herself (she’s had an accident en route) over to Shira, the new boss who’s the same as the old boss only worse, to be met with a freezing politeness that even she can tell amounts to a dismissal, all while Shruti Kothari’s Ellie, her friend, looks on with gratified amusement. Kimwun Perehinec has Shira’s full mean measure, though you can sometimes feel the actress straining in a way the character never has to. Shira is the system perfected, devoid of every feeling except ambition.

All of these actors, most of them new to me, have been welded into a fully-functioning ensemble in Santalucia’s production. (He’s new to me too as a director, though he’s been an increasingly impressive actor at Soulpepper, most recently and notably in Bed and Breakfast.) The way these people combine, separate, interact or at least rub their solitudes together, is like Chekhov with the furred gloves off, and without even so much as a comforting glass of Russian tea. Nothing is warming here: the only refreshments on offer to these party-goers are popsicles. (Boy, the management really seem to be cheapskates.) They’re dispensed by an intern called Trevor (perfect name) who at first seems a mere supernumerary but gradually emerges as a character, an increasingly concerned and involved one who, alone in the throng, gets to make an ethical choice; Michael Chiem plays him delightfully. He, I gather, is the adaptors’ invention and he might seem a sentimental one; but in fact he functions as a modest shaft of light that illuminates the surrounding darkness but doesn’t cancel it out. So yes, Horvath was better than Brecht. Still is.