Can political art change the world? It’s not a new question, though it’s a question that has become more interesting as the US continues its transformation into an oligarchy governed by perverts. This is the question playwright Jen Silverman wrestles with in Spain, the opening show of Profile Theatre’s 29th season. The ambitious production notably collaborates with Portland Opera, 45th Parallel Universe, and Metropolitan Youth Symphony, but its operatic and symphonic elements only really figure into the story’s climax. However, while Spain has a lot of strong components, it doesn’t fully cohere by the finale.
Set in New York’s West Village during the 1930s, Spain is a fictionalized account of the writing and release of a movie that actually exists, The Spanish Earth (1937). The feature’s director Joris Ivens (Ben Tissell) and editor Helen van Dongen (Cycerli Ash) hope creating a film about the Spanish Civil War will engender sympathy and support from US viewers for Spain’s leftist Republican government—as it is in danger of being overthrown by conservative Nationalists. To that end, the duo manage to ensnare two of the era’s best-known writers to work on the screenplay: Ernest Hemingway (Jason McBeth) and John Dos Passos (Brian Trybom).
As Spain’s leftist government had support from the Soviet Union, we soon learn the movie project is being further complicated by funding from the KGB, whose involvement has also blurred the fact and fiction of Joris and Helen’s professional and romantic relationships.
Silverman chooses a more modern sensibility for the dialogue and humor, similar to last season’s excellent Witch, again drawing subtle parallels between the historical and the present moments. The show opens with gentle sitcom-like banter between Joris and Helen, before slowly building into the tension of a spy-thriller, and shifting into darker and more introspective territory. Joris and Helen’s work begins to feel less like a challenging creative project and more like a conspiracy with severe consequences for any misstep.
Uncharacteristic for a man that’s fallen in with a dangerous foreign intelligence agency, Tissel plays Joris with easy affability. His character introduces the play’s ideas, but it’s Helen who most embodies them. Enmeshed in the political subterfuge that surrounds them, she knows both how to pull the strings so their project succeeds and how dangerous it is to actually pull them.
As Helen, Ash perfectly captures a character who is always performing, always thinking a step ahead of everyone in the room, and who also allows the audience to see a quiet resentment she carries under her mask, as she’s constantly sidelined and forced to manage the egos of the men around her.
Profile leans into the story’s cloak and dagger nature with an unassuming set design composed of sliding panels that open to reveal hidden rooms, emphasizing the hidden dangers all around the duo.
Caught up in their plot, frenemies Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos serve as foils for each other. McBeth plays Hemingway as brash, loud, and overconfident, eating up every scene he is in. The script avoids complete caricature, instead portraying Hemingway as a single-minded artist who understands the power of a story. In comparison, Dos Passos is a writer of nuance, an intellectual aware of the politics at play and dangerously curious about the point of a story. In Dos Passos’ role, Trybom holds a quiet conviction that doesn’t shrink when the two clash.
The pressure from unseen handlers, the artistic clash between screenwriters, and the real-life war unfolding across the Atlantic began to unravel Joris and Helen. Finally, the film goes into production and the show reaches its climax with a soaring aria performed by Karl (Adrian Rosales, who also plays one of the KGB handlers) accompanied by live musicians.
Much like the feeling Joris and Helen have been trying to create, the moment is meant to be transcendent. Projections of archival war footage, waves of soldiers, and images from Picasso’s Guernica wash over the set as Rosales sings of victory for the Republican army.
As the spectacle ends, Helen weighs the value of the movie they created. But it’s here that the source material works against the script. The Spanish Earth was a real film that was produced by Ivens and van Dongen. While their fictionalized counterparts wrestle with the ethics of their involvement with the project their story ends there, leaving the audience with only the ambiguity of their musings in the face of an uncertain future. We know what happened.
The US refused official involvement in the Spanish Civil War. The Republicans and their allies lost—including the KGB. The Nationalists won. An empowered, totalitarian dictatorship killed thousands of its own citizens.
So, did The Spanish Earth actually matter? In their script notes, Silverman states that Spain is not a play about history, but even in taking obvious liberties with historical record, how is an audience to know how much of the framework to hold onto or discard? Why choose to reimagine an event that had an outcome that undercuts your message?
Spain also lacks a political viewpoint to enrich it. The connection between the plays characters and the political struggle is tenuous at best, none of them are actual members of the communist party and none of them are Spanish. They are, for the most part, ideologically empty. While they appropriately feel guilt over their involvement with KGB, they give little serious thought to the Nationalist front they are opposing, or the larger messy struggle against fascism. This is not a passion project. It’s a job. The stakes for most of the characters are emotional. As much as nuance is touted as a virtue in Spain, it falls short of its own convictions.
Instead, as the play concludes, Silverman attempts to compare The Spanish Earth with America’s current political landscape, awash in online propaganda. The question of the play becomes muddled as it grapples with an online media ecosystem vastly different from the 1930s.
Spain is not a play meant to deliver a tidy lesson for audiences to walk away with. It’s an exploration of ideas that are critical to wrestle with right now, but it lacks the punch to push the conversation into new territory. It’s a production filled with strong performances that blends mediums together in interesting ways. That is not happening in most theaters. Spain might change the world a little still, and that makes it worth seeing.
Profile Theatre presents Spain at the Ellen Bye Studio in the Armory, 128 NW 11th, through November 8, tickets and showtimes at profiletheatre.org, $60.43