In 1744, Pierre Marivaux wrote a play by the name of “La Dispute.” It showed for one night, received lukewarm reviews, and closed, not to be seen again for some 200 years.
Now, in the 21st century, in the wake of world wars and the advent of reality television, “La Dispute” has been reborn, not as a love comedy but as a more twisted play about monitored human experiments with sinister social underpinnings.
“It is a rare opportunity to see this play because we see something unsettling and resonant,” said visiting director Darko Tresnjak, who brings Marivaux’s work to the UCSD stage for a graduate theater production. “Time has made [the play] more powerful, which is unfortunate for what it says about the world.”
The extended one-act play is about the experiments of a prince (Scott Drummond) who orders four babies, two girls and two boys, to be raised in solitude by two aged caretakers (Jennifer Chang and Mark Smith). Eventually, they will be shown to each other to prove which gender is the first to be unfaithful — male or female.
While exploring ideas of love, biological determinism, eroticism and cruelty, the four youths grow aware of their own selves, experience their first loves and know their first betrayals.
Tresnjak says that working on the play has been a great exercise in not taking the work too literally.
“Everything turns to violence, not because of human nature, but because [the characters] are caught in an experiment that shows a damaging social system,” he said. “It is a rigged experiment.”
Marivaux finds a niche in today’s growing social consciousness that explores the permutations of the human heart.
The play is set in a world devoid of color — white ground, white sky and white trees. The set also includes a flowing river where the youths first come to see their reflections. (Tresnjak would have flooded the pit for this if it were not so expensive.)
To achieve the effect of innocent youth, A.K. Murtadha, who plays the boy Azor, said he talked a lot with Tresnjak about discovery and wonder.
“You need to make it feel real for the audience. Things in acting are often about discoveries,” said Carmen Gill, who plays the girl, Egle.
In this case, Murtadha and Gill, along with Keiana Richard and Samuel Stricklen, had to imagine back to the first moment they discovered themselves and others. Their work is evident in the performances: Something resembling true delight trickles across their faces as they see their own pictures or find another being their age in the white forest.
There is something quite genuine and touching that breaks the audience’s hearts as we see the characters grow more aware of their surroundings and experience hate, betrayal and violence under the oppressive yet charming gaze of the prince and his lover Hermaine (Teri Kretz).
If you are looking for meditations on love and the human condition on the coattails of Valentine’s Day — something with a bit more edge than chocolate-covered strawberries and stuffed teddy bears — or if you just want a chance to see the coveted Tresnjak work with UCSD Master of Fine Arts candidates, be sure to see “La Dispute” sometime during its Feb. 20 to Feb. 26 run in the Mandell Weiss Theatre.