Oscar Ceville and Nanna Ingvarsson (JBryanda Minix)
From The 39 Steps to Groundhog Day, movie adaptations are an increasingly familiar sight in theater listings. For the most part these are blockbuster productions, but Scena’s Fear Eats the Soul proves that even within the modest confines of a black box theater, a thoughtful company can successfully bring cinema to the stage—and perhaps even improve upon it.
Like the film, the play is set in Germany in 1974. Emmi (Nanna Ingvarsson) looks defeated. She is an aging cleaning woman, and a widow. One rainy evening she seeks shelter in a neighborhood bar where she has often passed by and heard foreign music playing, The bar caters to a mixed German and Arabic clientele, among them Ali (Oscar Ceville), a Moroccan immigrant who works as a mechanic. Egged on by his friends, he reluctantly asks the considerably older Emmi to dance, setting in motion a bittersweet love story about race, immigration, and aging.
Adapted by Anthony Vivis, the script is faithful to the film, with the minor exception of a camped-up restaurant scene (while Fassbinder did not lack humor and was not immune to camp, this tonal shift seems out of place). Director Robert McNamara gets strong performances out of his leads. While Brigitte Mira turned in a moving performance as Emmi in the film, Ingvarsson makes the character her own, managing to imbue the lost and perhaps historically abused woman with a unexpectedly commanding presence. Ceville is a vast improvement on the film’s El Hedi ben Salem, who had a strong physical presence but limited acting chops.
What really distinguishes Scena’s production is the decision to direct the supporting cast to act as mere caricatures, while the central couple seems to be the only real people on stage.
As Emmi’s family and Ali’s friends almost universally look at their relationship with disapproval—for reasons varying from racism to the age difference—the naysayers are reduced to two-dimensional cartoons. Between scenes, cast members (who each play multiple roles) sit at the edge of the stage on chairs that face the action, leaving Emmi and Ali, even when they seem to be alone, the subject of hostile glares. When friends and family start to come around and accept the couple, the supporting performers are still caricatures, suggesting that prevailing attitudes, no matter what they are, may be little more than groupthink.
The film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was inspired by the 1950s Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk, specifically the May-December romance of All That Heaven Allows. On stage, Ceville’s salt-and-pepper hair undercuts what is supposed to be a 20-year age difference with Emmi, and he’s immediately likable, forming a cute stage couple out of what was not exactly a cute film couple. With the flat characters around them spouting polemic, Fear Eats the Soul addresses hot-button issues like race and immigration, but at its heart this is a love story that transcends politics.
Fear Eats the Soul is at the Atlas Performing Arts Center through June 4. $35-45. Buy tickets here.
