He Who Gets Slapped Brings Malevolent Masochism to Brooklyn College Stage

Consuela (Odie DeJesus) the bareback rider, slaps the nameless clown (Ian Wen) who has fallen deeply, and tragically, in love with her.

April 11, 2002    Leonid Andreyev's mystical melodrama He Who Gets Slapped is serious slapstick. The 1915 play, set in a flea-bitten French circus, comes to the New Workshop Theater April 11 -- 14, as the master's thesis project of Joe Brady, a second-year student in the Theater Department's M.F.A. program. "It's a challenging play to produce," Brady admits. "There are fifteen people in the cast, and, although it's very realistic, there's also a metaphysical slant to the whole thing. The emotion in the scenes is almost Shakespearean, but I think the audience will really like the world of the play and the really strong characters that Andreyev has written."

    The play begins backstage at a circus owned by Papa Briquet (Troy Lescher), a world-weary show-biz veteran. His wife, Zinida (Valerie C. Pye), is an animal trainer who has trouble getting her trained tigers to obey her and who quietly pines for Bezano (Michael Fleming), the trick rider who is billed as "half-man, half-horse." Bezano is in love with Consuelo (Odie DeJesus), his riding partner, who is destined to be married off by her father, Count Mancini (Don Flores), to a crass and unfeeling millionaire, Baron Regnard (Arthur Soybel).

Director Joe Brady, MFA student, playwright, and veteran of many unruly theater groups.

    Into this complex arrangement of overlapping love triangles wanders a nameless waif (Ian Wen), who begs Papa Briquet for a chance to work. The clowns immediately see the comic potential for this strange newcomer--as a victim of slapstick. The stranger is dubbed "He Who Gets Slapped" and his act (where he gets mercilessly slapped by all the clowns while gamely attempting to give an intellectual speech) is a great success. Soon, a mysterious Gentleman Caller (Paul Newport) arrives and reveals the masochistic clown's past and his former prominence as an intellectual who has been driven to despair.

    But, because the play is tragic, there is no happy ending in store for any of the characters. Before too long, "He" has fallen in love with Consuelo, and his intense passions, bottled for so long, burst forth in a murderous rage. The play, one of the last pieces written by Andreyev, has long been a favorite of director Joe Brady, who, like Papa Briquet, has had plenty of experience running small troupes of unruly actors. In 1992, Brady founded Mother Lode Productions, a theater group, and The Flying Tongues, an improvisational sketch comedy group, both of which trod the boards at various Baltimore-area theaters and nightclubs. In 1998, Brody moved to Chicago, where he took classes at Chicago's Second City, performed at the Improv Olympics and the Annoyance Theater and formed another improv group, Blue Highways. In 2000, Brady came to New York to study at Brooklyn College, write plays, and work as the literary manager of the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater.

"He Who Gets Slapped" (Ian Wen) receives a backhanded smack.

      Brady's most recent play, Bow Down, written as a cabaret piece about life in New York City after September 11, will be playing at La Mama, the prestigious theater on West Fourth Street in Manhattan, from April 4 to 21.

   This is not the first time He Who Gets Slapped has been performed at Brooklyn College. In 1950, Paul Mazursky won acclaim in a campus revival of the Andreyev play. His performance caught the eye of scenarist Howard Sackler, who introduced the young actor to an aspiring filmmaker named Stanley Kubrick. As a result, Kubrick cast Mazursky in his first feature film, Fear and Desire, and the Brooklyn College student was soon embarked on a prestigious career as actor, director and writer. On May 30, Mazursky (director of An Unmarried Woman, Moscow on the Hudson, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) will return to Brooklyn College to accept an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts at Brooklyn College's Seventy-Seventh Commencement.

    He Who Gets Slapped will be staged at the 150-seat New Workshop Theater in Whitman Hall, Thursday through Saturday, April 11-- 14, at 8 p.m., with special matinee performances on Saturday and Sunday, April 13 and 14, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $4 for adults and $3 for Brooklyn College students. For more information, call (718) 951-4500.