Armin Wiebe's The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz

I hate to say this, but what a colossally drawn out play. Even before the seminar and reading the works that spawned this play, I could tell that it was a short story with nowhere to go but the depths of hideous playdom. That said, the main points were insightful, the setting was novel, as was the low German. But they struggled to fill in the gaping two hour slot by ramming in the revelation point where Obrum realizes that he subconsciously wanted Beethoven to knock up his wife. If the work had been published as a series of short stories than we would have been able to address this point as you would normally do. Read through the story, then afterward in quiet reflection (not low German screeching) realize that that may have been Obrum's intention, and then scroll back to that line and look for clues in the syntax.

The whole play seemed a bit heavy. I expected a play with Mennonite subject manner to be handled a little more delicately. Of course, the feel was supposed to be a folk play, or at least that's how it was made out in the newspaper article, and that probably would have ruined the tone, but if Wiebe wanted folk play, he should have condensed it to an hour. It lends itself to the theme and he would have been able to cut out the ridiculous redundancies.

It was almost a relief for me to go back and read the original works and recapture the subtlety, but at the same time it was upsettingly clear that if he had condensed it to a single short story or novella, he would have had trouble squeezing in the full poison ivy story. And if it had become a novel, he would have had to generate piles of irrelevant content to fill in the gaps. Even the characters seemed so stupid and simple in the play version in contrast to the short stories, that it was impossible to relate to them. Then again, it 's hard for me to relate to plotlines that revolve solely around women who desire children- so it's possible I'm not the best person to be reviewing this play.

I suppose I have to congratulate Armin Wiebe for doing the best he could with such difficult content. I don't know what I would have done.

Breakfast Television speaks with Armin Wiebe