What Was John Malkovich Thinking?

There is no possible logical explanation. Yesterday and Tuesday at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, the residents of Montreal were not expecting to see and hear “The Giacomo Variations,” a hybrid theater spectacle composed of opera and boulevard humor which was inspired by the writings of Casanova. They were only interested in seeing the performance of American actor John Malkovich.

That must have been the case, however, in terms of where the lyrical musical stops. Recently, it was in Europe; tomorrow and Sunday it will be in New York, later on Toronto. The author and director, Austrian Michael Sturminger, is no fool. This is probably why, in the first minutes of the performance, he tricks the public as to the reasons for his presence, and he makes everyone think that the lead actor has suffered an illness.

Not even 10 minutes had passed out of the two-and-a-half hour show (including intermission) when John Malkovich collapsed on stage. “John!” yelled singer Sophie Klussmann. Musical director Martin Haselböck stopped the orchestra. A stage manager appeared on stage, obviously worried, and asked if anyone in the audience was a doctor.

The audience responded to the call (or maybe they were accomplices to the scheme?). Paramedics arrived on the scene with a stretcher on which they placed the actor, who appeared to be unconscious. A murmur went through the room. I wondered, as my fellow audience members did, if all of this was part of the show.

For a few seconds, I was amazed. Then the conductor gave the signal for the musicians to continue playing “Eccovi Medicode” from the opera “Cosi Fan Tutte,” burlesqueness had flared up around a rejuvenated Casanova along with penis jokes — and at that moment I realized I was in for a long evening. This show is going to be like an aria, I thought to myself without thinking for a moment about the music.

I have nothing against John Malkovich; in fact, I have admired him for a long time. But I must admit that I was out of it a few times during this long stage ordeal. Valmont’s character was not really taken to the hospital — without consequence, of course — so I can drift off and think about other, less difficult chores such as washing the dishes for supper, draining the gutter of its decomposed leaves or reflecting on the summer at the Cape.

In the interests of pure professionalism and in order to have something to write in this column, I stayed until the end of the show. And I am not exaggerating by saying that the only reason the room was not half-empty by intermission is that people wanted to see the scene with John Malkovich and most tickets were priced between $130 and $180.

For the rest, despite the austere decor of the Wilfrid-Pelletier room, I had the impression of having been screened in the past — in 1982, to be precise, in the Variety Theatre. The Variety Theatre looks like the Scala of Milan, with its operatic burlesqueness seasoned with dirty jokes. It is both classy and tasteful, like an oversized wedding cake, out of which a stripper could emerge uttering shrill notes.

These Giacomo Variations, I found, were very cheesy. I don’t have much to say for any device which uses three giant hoop skirts, under which lurked different rascal characters, and even a queen, king, viscount or marquis.

In short, it is under the skirts of girls like the singing Souchon, who portrayed the symbolic lourdade of this sad spectacle, which reduces Casanova to his baser instincts. Casanova was greater than an 18th-century Venetian libertine.

Here we have a distorted portrayal of not just the life of this philosopher, mathematician and traveling scholar. The staging of “The Giacomo Variations,” with its sauciness, suggests all sorts of interpretations with extracts from famous operas by Mozart (“Don Giovanni,” “Cosi Fan Tutte,” “The Marriage of Figaro”). And none of this helps.

The fake heart attack at the start of the piece is the first quackery among many frequent breaks in tone, lewd jokes and rambling musical numbers. This show is desperately trying to make sense of an incomprehensible narrative. At the LNI [National League of Improvisation] we would have ended the show early, in order to avoid all of these excessive hysterics.

In terms of the role of Giacomo Casanova, John Malkovich is languid and phlegmatic; his voice has its own timbre so this is not too bad. But he really does not know how to sing and his alter ego, singer Simon Schnorr, really does not know how to play. Oh, when things go wrong ….

In thinking of the pure train wreck this show was, only one question remains: How can a multilingual actor such as John Malkovich, who has performed in theater and film of North America and Europe, find himself in such a mess? It is true that his career has had its fair share of failures. His career is a distribution of “RED,” a film about retired hit men; this will be seen soon at the cinema. But this is far from great art.

Malkovich is capable of self-mockery and he is pretty straightforward. He has no problem admitting that sometimes certain contracts have an attractive cachet attached to them. I don’t know what happened this time. I do wish him well, though.