Cast Shines in Loquacious and Farcical 'Bach at Leipzig' From Seat of the Pants Productions

Through April 7 at Franklin Circle Christian Church Credit: Photo credit: Aimee Lambes

There are times when a theater or movie critic will refer to a work as “talky.” That term might confuse some, since most plays seem talky with, you know, all those people talking all the time. It’s not until you see a play such as Bach at Leipzig that you know what talky really means.

Staged by Seat of the Pants Productions at the Franklin Circle Christian Church, this show is a non-stop litany of words (of the highest order, mind you) as playwright Itamar Moses fires ideas, identities, and witticisms at the audience like a Gatling gun. After a long first act that labors to disentangle itself from its own preening cleverness and monumental exposition, the second act feels freer and less self-consciously erudite.

Designed and performed as a farce, complete with slapstick and sword fights, it all begins with the off-stage death of the kapellmeister, the choir master and organist at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in 1722. When he face-plants onto his keyboard (as a character notes, “The man performed his own dirge with his face”) the race is on to snatch that well-paid and prestigious position.

A questionable lineup of candidates is then introduced, kind of like in the old flick “The Magnificent Seven” if you replaced the word Magnificent with Mediocre. New-idea guy Fasch (Heidi Harris) and stuck-in-the-mud Schott (Scott Esposito) show up first, since they were former students of the expired fellow and feel they have the inside track.

Then in not-so-quick succession they are followed by shyster-gambler Lenck (Kadijah Wingo), daddy-issue Steindorff (Luke Wehner), good-natured featherhead Kaufmann (Molly McFadden), and “always-second-best-organist” Graupner (Carolyn Demanelis). Each of their introductions are studded with musings about religious and philosophical ideas of the time. It feels like an Age of Enlightenment force-feeding, with the audience as the foie gras.

Those characters have the same agenda and begin fashioning alliances and secret pacts as they lie, cheat and even drug one of their cohorts so they can gain the upper hand. Each of them is richly flawed in one way or another, which makes the ensuing scenes intermittently amusing, even when the playwright’s comic devices are repeated so often you can spot the gags coming from far off.

The audience is then given a post-intermission treat as the good ol’ play-within-a-device idea is employed. When gullible Kaufmann overhears a plotting session between two other characters she perceives it as rehearsal for an entertainment, a ripe subject for her analysis and editing.

From there, the 150-minute production devolves into increasingly farcical fractures until the end is reached and the winner is revealed. (Who could it be? You might find a clue in the title.)

It must be said that the above-cited actors perform admirably under the direction of Michael Glavan, with each one contributing unique and stellar moments to the ensemble effort. However, Glavan dials their collective acting volumes and reactions up to 9.9, not allowing for any conversations to progress at anything resembling a normal pace and attitude. Indeed, every line is declaimed with the intensity a mother directing her small children out of a burning building.

This stylized approach is arresting at first but eventually becomes tiresome, as it feels each performer is always trying to one-up the other. This cacophony of voices blurs the meaning of the dialog and steals one of the most powerful tools of any actor: the ability to throw a line away and thus own it forever.

With subtlety bulldozed into dust, the jokes become predictable and a bit ponderous. Such as when one character after another confess to drugging poor Steindorff. By the second confession we get it, but it continues until, of course, Steindorff himself confesses to drugging himself.

Also, a section of Act Two dedicated to explaining the structure of a fugue uses the cast to dash about, supposedly illustrating the points. It is about as enlightening as watching people rush through Grand Central Station to get to their track.

Setting aside some questionable playwriting and directorial decisions, all hail to the cast that turns in yeoman, often inventive work, and manages to make the show quite delightful when they are given the opportunity.

Bach at Leipzig
Through April 7, produced by Seat of the Pants Productions at Franklin Circle Christian Church, 1688 Fulton Road, seatofthepants.org.

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