This goofy comedy, set in early 1900s Germany, begins the day of the King's parade when the main character, Louise, suddenly and embarrassingly loses her underpants. A whirlwind of burlesque hilarity follows; several men pursue her, and her husband is too self-absorbed to notice the ensuing chaos. Martin proves to be astoundingly multi-talented in his refashioning of this German social commentary farce into a piece relevant and entertaining to a modern American audience.
His adaptation of "The Underpants" reminds viewers of the Steve Martin who wrote the novella "Shopgirl" and its screenplay, who adapted "Cyrano de Bergerac" into "Roxanne" and who interpreted George Eliot's "Silas Marner" into his own "A Simple Twist of Fate." The accomplished actor/author/playwright admits, "However true I intend to remain to the original text, the adaptation is continuously influenced, altered and redefined by modern times. Each time the process has taken me through the stages of a failing marriage: fidelity, transgression and finally, separation."
Christa Hinckley '08, who not only plays the lead female role of Louise but has also helped build and paint the set, was at work on the backdrop last week. She especially appreciated Martin's knack for contemporizing the old in his emphasis on social criticism through comedy.
"It deals with our society's obsession with celebrity, how people are treated when they have their 15 minutes of fame, how quickly they come and go and our society's reaction to art," said Hinckley.
Martin's version of Sternheim's work thus proves to be a farce in the full sense of the word, making the audience members laugh throughout, but simultaneously forcing them to keep thinking about the play long afterward. That's not to say the comedy is any less effective for the presence of its serious undertones. Rather, as Hinckley describes, the play is "a huge spoof, with fart jokes, burp jokes, sexual innuendos and smart humor all at the same time, making it very refreshing."
So after all this acclaim, what is the play about? The actual underpants in question belong to the bourgeois Louise; they fall down while their owner watches the King's through town. Two spectators of both the parade and the underpants -- Cohen and Versati -- fall in love with the embarrassed, married woman, and they take the opportunity of her search for tenants to make a move on her, so to speak.
Louise's husband Theo nervously and absurdly berates his wife after the incident, fearing that his status and reputation will collapse due to this silly accident, but remains oblivious to Cohen and Versati's pursuit of his wife, or the unfathomably ridiculous reason they want her.
In the original German version, Theo banished the couple's prospective tenants partly out of jealousy for his wife, but also due to his anti- Semitic prejudices against Louise's would-be suitor, Cohen. In Martin's vision, as Hinckley explained, Theo "is a chauvinist," with prejudices more general than those of Sternheim's character, as well as a philistine. "He's one of those uncultured Americans who knows nothing and thinks he knows everything at the same time," Hinckley said.
Although Louise's embarrassing moment spurns the action of play, her character floats above ridicule while the others continually make fools of themselves. Theo becomes the full embodiment of the German stereotypical male, boasting of his efficiency, greedily plotting to subdivide the space for rent to increase his profits, and taking undue pride in his work and his physical shape. Versati is the foppish, self-obsessed poet and Cohen the nerd who competes with him for Louise. The spinster who lives upstairs, Gertrude, vicariously lives through the young and pretty Louise, urging to her to have an affair.
In his introduction to the adapted "The Underpants," Martin calls Sternheim's original play "ribald, satirical, self-referential and quirky," and no doubt both the modern playwright and the Dartmouth players have preserved those qualities in their performances this week. Whether you go as a belated Valentine's Day date, or if you just need to escape your thoughts with some comedy, make sure not miss this term's production by the Dartmouth Theatre Department at the Moore Theater in the Hopkins Center.
