Bach at Leipzig is an intriguing title. It stirs hopes of an Amadeus, perhaps a Souvenir or a Travesties. Alas and alack. Itamar Moses has a splendid idea -- let six musicians (the requisite number of voices in a fugue) in 1722 compete for the job of music master, let them discuss fugues and end with a verbal fugue. Unfortunately, director Pam MacKinnon, who is excellent at moving people around on the stage, doesn't control their hysterics and declamations when they speak. Reg Rogers, as the most disreputable one, is a good actor with bad habits; he sounds every in-breath and spits his plosives; Jeffrey Carlson, playing a foppish ne'er-do-well, swallows his words unintelligibly -- they are swamped anyway by his slight lisp as he camps his role. Boyd Gaines and Michael Emerson are quite fine, until their long declamations without modulation pour forth. There is much too much strutting and fretting in the production. So although the script is quite witty in some places, it is undermined by the acting. Also hurting are a simplistic argument about whether to innovate or not in music, and, off the main subjects, nonsense by Rogers' character trying a con game, and then long exposition about gambling.
Good jokes are sprinkled sparsely, and we get a vivid physical explanation about what a fugue is (MacKinnon at her best), and we see a conflict between Lutheranism and Calvinism. Moses, who is smart and knowledgeable, has them give an argument about form and content in a play -- perhaps he did the whole thing as a platform for his ideas. But he is no Tom Stoppard or Oscar Wilde, and there isn't enough sparkling wit or awesome insight, so it sums up to pretentiousness. At the end, Bach at Leipzig has become a French Farce with fast entrances and exits, deteriorating into foolishness. The punch line, where the six voices turn their arguments into a fugue, instead of being a soaring tour-de-force, is just lines overlapping without a blending note, sans musical/intellectual thrill. And, to top all the disappointments, Bach never appears; we merely hear some of his music at the end.
The set by David Zinn is excellent, as are the costumes by Mathew J. LeFebvre and wigs by Tom Watson. David Landers' lighting is the best thing in the show -- it's absolutely brilliant as it lifts scenes up, highlights characters, brings everything to life and gives us a spectacular finish at the end.
