This reviewer will admit to being a lover of Beethoven, which will no doubt color this review. Playwright/Director Moises Kaufman's 33 Variations brings the story of Beethoven's "Diabelli Variations" to stage. Loosely based on music publisher Anton Diabelli's request of Beethoven and others to write variations on his 45-second waltz, Beethoven went on to write 33 variations over a period of several years.
Derek McLane's set design creates a proscenium of museum--style flat file boxes simulating the storage area of Beethoven's works in Bonn, Germany. The backdrop is moveable walls of hanging sheet music. Additional walls of music and storage areas float in and out defining both location and mood. A grand piano at stage right is barely visible, sunk almost below the stage level. Pianist Diane Walsh plays about two thirds of the variations throughout the production. Her interpretation of each piece greatly enhances and compliments the mood at the moment. The show opens with a single chair downstage center.
Kaufman creates researcher Katherine Brandt (Jayne Atkinson), in a fascinating play of discovery. Her research is supremely thorough to the point of impressing keeper of Beethoven's works, Dr. Gertie Ladenburger (Susan Kellerman), who becomes her friend.
Brandt is a sick women in the beginning phase of ALS. She is under the care of Nurse Mike Clark (Ryan King). This brings into play a separate story of Mike and Brandt's daughter Clara (Laura Odeh), a charming love story of a worried daughter knowing her mother is dying and the man that is helping to easy their pain.
Still, this is the story of Beethoven's variations, so we dip back to that later part of his life, when he'll write his mass and the ninth, wedging the variations in during this four-year period. Beethoven (Zach Grenier) is near the end of his life and ill. His ever-present aide and friend Anton Schindler (Erik Steele) tends to his needs and tolerates his many tirades. Anton Diabelli (Don Amendolia), the music publisher of many composers, rounds out the 1820s cast. The parallel stories of the ailing composer and researcher are balanced by the developing love story of the young couple. The integration of many of the variations into the production works well.
Kaufman's piece requires his cast to be triple threats (actors, singers, and dancers), and they are excellent at all.
Jeffrey Sugg's projections of the variation numbers and some sheet music (including one that is being inscribed as it is being played) adds another dimension to the staging. Andre Pluess' sound design complements the music and enhances to the production.
Following the three plot lines is a joy. We see Brandt's increasing passion of discovery even as she is dying. Beethoven is driven, finding something new in Diabelli's simple, 45-second waltz - not one or two ideas but 33. Watching Clara torn between the realization of her mother's dying and the increasing joy she experiences with Mike gives balance.
Rarely do all of the elements of a production come together in such complete synchronicity. 33 Variations is the best experience this reviewer has had in the theater this excellent season.
Several scenes stand out, such as Brandt hallucinating Beethoven. Most dramatic and powerful is Beethoven passionately composing a later variations while the pianist is taking his direction of crashing crescendos and quiet decrescendos -- pure musical excitement. You do not have to be a music lover to be enthralled.
