Review: The Infernal Comedy featuring John Malkovich [Theater]

Nathalie Bauer

The Infernal Comedy featuring John Malkovich
through Tuesday, October 25
Bass Concert Hall (510 E. 23rd Street)
$42-52, $10 with student ID, 8 pm
[info] | [tickets]

In the latest touring show on offer at UT's Bass Concert Hall, the draw is obvious: Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich. The whip-smart movie star with the careful, odd cadence and stare is a casting coup for Michael Sturminger and Martin Haselböck, the creators of The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer. Malkovich, accompanied by two lovely sopranos (Louise Fribo and Martene Grimson) and backed by the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, is in full scenery-chewing glory in his portrayal of the real-life Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Indeed, the entire ensemble of this production - part one-man show, part opera - is on point, and utterly worth seeing.

The trouble here is that the show's concept is a mean-spirited mess. Unterweger went to jail in 1976 for murdering a prostitute. While imprisoned, he wrote an autobiography that earned him great literary respect and, eventually, clemency for his crime. Upon release he - surprise! - went right back to strangling whores with their own bras, only this time, he reported on the crimes as a journalist, as well. When he was finally busted again, he hung himself in prison upon receiving another life sentence in 1994.

This is rich subject matter for the theater, but Sturminger's script sets up the audience to laugh at the antics of a nasty man, as he reenacts his mysogynistic crimes on the two sopranos accompanying him. The hokey premise is that Unterweger is dead - yet somehow he's on a tour promoting his new book! One might allow that - after all, more preposterous things have happened on the stage - but then Unterweger informs us, repeatedly, that his "shit editor" has added the orchestra and singers as an accompaniment to his tour. There doesn't seem to be any reason why, particularly since the killer says he doesn't like classical music.

Then things get weird. The singers - who seem to be playing hired singers who have no idea what they're in for - alternately fall all over Unterweger and run in fear from him, as he discusses his keen ability to entice and manipulate females, and his inexplicable desire to violently take their lives. As Malkovich places gaudy bras over their clothing, strangles them, and caresses their bodies as they attempt to hit high notes through uncomfortable or sexually aroused grimaces, I had to wonder what singers would allow themselves to be cast in such victimized roles. (I was reminded of the treatment of women in Lars von Trier's films - except those have a coherent point to make.) Sure, lots of opera is packed with doomed heroines who moon over terrible men and die violent deaths - but to place them in the false context of a supposedly real, untagged book tour, in a manner that makes the abuse they take seem funny? Then they threw in some region-specific jokes and old folks humor about Wikipedia and Macs vs. PCs. Really.

What's unfortunate is that Unterweger's story is truly fascinating. The notion of the killer as romantic figure, and the idea of a memoir (full of lies, by the way) elevating a violent criminal to the status of artist and thereby winning him freedom is screaming for an incisive, complex staged portrayal. Unfortunately, we got this instead.