When Obrum Kehler, a Mennonite farmer, gets poison ivy between his legs, rather than take a day-off from working the field, he wears one of his wife’s skirts. When the wool skirt is too rough on his sensitive bits he ends up wearing her wedding underskirt too. As he first puts it on he wonders aloud: “How come only women can wear such smooth things?”
This early scene in Armin Wiebe’s play, The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz, sets the stage (pardon the pun) for the rest of the story in two important ways. First we are introduced to the comedic tone of the play. And secondly we learn a lot about Obrum’s character. Namely that he will go to any length to fulfill his manly duties.
The basic plot of the play is that Obrum and Susch Kehler are a Mennonite couple living just outside a small town in rural Manitoba. They have been married for two years but are still without a child. Obrum fears that a case of the mumps in his past has made him infertile and Susch is beginning to wonder the same thing.
When Obrum brings an old broken piano into the house, he asks Beethoven Blatz, an eccentric Russian immigrant and gifted musician, to fix the piano and teach Susch to play. Blatz ends up working on the piano day and night and even lives in their small farm house. But he spends more time composing his own music than teaching Susch.
Inspired by Blatz’s imaginings that Susch is his dead Russian lover, Obrum develops a plan. He wants Blatz to tune more than his piano. He asks him to impregnate his wife. However, he does not tell his wife of his plan and there in lies the comedy.
Obrum gets a carpentry job in town to give Blatz and his wife more time to themselves. Soon Susch figures out what her husband is up to. And what is her response you ask? Does she confront him about it? Does she tear a strip off him for offering her up to this gangly Russian musician? No. She has sex with the gangly Russian musician on the piano stool while her husband is away.
A key part of the plot is uncertainty if the piano stool scene reaches it full climax (if you know what I mean). Because, midway through Blatz is distracted by the music in his head and he must return to composing. The next day Obrum returns and the couple make passionate love. When Susch ends up becoming pregnant soon after it is uncertain who the father is. After the show during a question and answer period Wiebe said that he particularly like that ambiguity of the story.
It’s a complicated, entertaining comedy that is filled with sexual innuendo and hilarious misunderstandings. It was also educational for a person like me who knows little of Mennonite culture. The story also delves deep into the lengths a couple will go to start a family.
The chemistry among the actors was strong and the accents and dialogue rang true. Wiebe tends to pepper his writing with low-German terms common to early 20th century rural Manitoba Mennonites. I have no experience with low-German, however I was able to follow along quite easily most of the time. It was usually just one German word in a sentence and I could usually infer what was meant. For example, in Besides God Made Poison Ivy, Wiebe’s original short story that inspired the play there are phrases like:
"it was so schendlich hot that night"
or
"But every few minutes the itch got so gruelich strong he
shrugged himself and schulpsed water all over the floor."
shrugged himself and schulpsed water all over the floor."
As you can see it does not take too much mental gymnastics to imagine what some of those words might mean. However, in reading the short story it was easier to make sure that I was not misunderstanding anything because I could go back and review a sentence or two. But in the play when words are flying by at the speed of speech and the odd German word is thrown in you can get a sense that you may have missed something. Once or twice the entire crowd was laughing and I was left scratching my head wishing I had studied up on my low-German before the play. But if I did miss something I just trusted that Wiebe was not going to put too many German words in, for fear of losing his audience.
Wiebe, who was an instructor in the Creative Communications program, spoke about the play to current Red River College students last week. Wiebe said that he enjoyed the experience of writing, work-shopping, rewriting and rehearsing the play with the actors and director. “I felt like my play was a trampoline and all these people were jumping on it to see if the springs would hold,” said Wiebe.
The fact that The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz began as the short story, written in 1996, grew into a novel and finally morphed into a play offers some real insight into the length and unexpected route of the creative process. From a story about a man wearing a skirt while working in the field, to this complex, comedic love triangle. It just goes to show you that you never know where an idea may take you, and you should not be afraid to follow it.
Soupy out.
