C4 ez re the washington post.friday, february 21 , 2020
look up some of its real-life char-
acters, including the Jesuit schol-
ar and author Athanasius Kirch-
er; friedrich, king of Bohemia;
and his wife, Elizabeth Stuart, the
daughter of King James I of Eng-
land. Ty ll himself is a figure from
German folklore, dating back to
the 14 th century. H e’s appeared in
plays, novels and a richard
Strauss tone poem that was later
adapted into an opera. Kehlmann
humanizes him early on in a
chapter that is largely about Ty ll’s
father, Claus, a miller with a
passion for alchemy, necromancy
and the deeper mysteries of exis-
tence. Those pursuits draw the
attention of two passing Jesuit
priests who arrest Claus and try
him for witchcraft. rather than
serve as a witness against his
father, Ty ll runs away. The chap-
ter establishes the boy as a life-
long free thinker and opponent of
the religious orthodoxy that is
driving the war on all sides.
The visceral awfulness of the
conflict is vividly portrayed in the
chapter about friedrich and Eliz-abeth, whose brief reign earned
them the nicknames the “Winter
King and Queen.” Living in exile
in Holland, and suffering from
the plague, friedrich travels to
solicit help from King Gustav
Adolf of Sweden, whose forces are
rampaging across Germany. Tyll
is among friedrich’s small reti-
nue. Approaching the Swedish
camp, they are overwhelmed
with the stench: It “stank of
wounds and sores, of sweat and of
all diseases known to man. The
King blinked. It seemed to him as
if you could even see the smell, a
poisonous yellow thickening of
the air.” After friedrich vomits, a
soldier asks him, “A re you fin-
ished?” Tyll’s response serves as
both a political and medical diag-
nosis: “He’s finished.”
“Tyll,” originally published in
German in 2017 and already be-
ing adapted into a Netflix series,
is part of a group of recent literary
historical novels set in the 17 th
and early 18th centuries. Last
year, Dexter Palmer published
“mary To ft; or, the rabbit Queen,”a fictional retelling of a notorious
hoax from the 1720s in which a
woman was said to have given
birth to dead bunnies. Its subject
was a timely one: gullibility, fake
news and alternative facts. re-
cently in these pages, ron Charles
reviewed Arthur Phillips’s latest
novel, “The King at the Edge of
the World,” about the fight to
succeed Queen Elizabeth I of
England. Charles noted that the
struggle was “not so different
from the challenges we face in our
own hyper-political times.”
Given the current geopolitical
climate, it’s easy to understand
why these writers were drawn to
this tumultuous period in history.
And it’s also no surprise that all
three novels feature wit and com-
edy, hallmarks of the literature
from that era. “Tyll” embraces
this tradition, entertaining us like
a jester on a tightrope and re-
minding us of the danger of a fall.
[email protected]Jon Michaud is the author of the
novel “When tito Loved clara.”BY JON
MICHAUDDaniel Kehl-
mann’s “Ty ll”
begins with a
bravura open-
ing chapter
reminiscent of
Shirley Jack-
son’s short sto-
ry “The Lot-
tery.” The set-
ting is a small
village in Cen-
tral Europe,
early in the
17 th century.
one morning a
covered wagon
arrives in town carrying a legend-
ary jester, Ty ll Ulenspiegel, and
his troupe of performers. They
put on a play; they dance and
sing; and then Ty ll walks a high
tightrope. The show captivates
the townsfolk, transporting them
from their dreary provincial lives.
“We understood what life could
be like for someone who really
did whatever he wanted, who
believed in nothing and obeyed
no one; we understood what it
would be like to be such a person,
and we understood that we would
never be such people.” They
throw coins at the jester, but he
repays them by instigating a
brawl among the spectators.
While they fight, Ty ll and his
troupe slip away with the money.
The brawl foreshadows the
much larger conflict at the heart
of “Tyll”: the Thirty Years’ War,
fought among European powers
from 1618 to 1648. While the title
and the opening chapter suggest
that the jester will be this novel’scentral character, Ty ll winds up a
Zelig-like figure who appears in
every chapter (sometimes as a
cameo) sowing chaos and telling
truths no one wants to hear. Each
chapter functions as a self-
contained short story or novella
with recurring themes and char-
acters tying the whole together.
Some are more successful than
others, and the best are transfix-
ing. German-language novelist
Kehlmann, like Ty ll, is a trickster,
and his cheekiness is well served
by ross Benjamin’s fluid, stylish
translation. The book is full of red
herrings and dead ends, but it
rewards close readers with grace
notes and unexpected narrative
connections. There’s also a drag-
on.
Unless you’re a student of Eu-
ropean history, “Ty ll” i s likely to
send you back to the annals toBook World
A j ester navigates historical chaos
Tyll
by daniel
kehlmann;
translated from
German by ross
benjamin
pantheon.
352 pp; $26.95
the pulpit. You get the sense of an
entire community seeking to
shake off insularity, and feeling
free to vent.
The feel of the 1950s is vibrant-
ly achieved in Andy Jean’s dra-
matic, colorful costumes; a
starched white, button-up coat
dress and a green satin gown for
Ellis are among the most vivid of
the eye-catching looks. Attention
must also be paid to the work
here of music director Victor
Simonson, who whips the gospel
chorus into effervescent shape. At
other times, the singers, moved
by the spirit, whip themselves
into holy-roller frenzies. Such is
the energy surge onstage that
you’ll want to know how you
might plug into it yourself.
[email protected]The Amen Corner, by James
baldwin. directed by Whitney White.
Lighting, adam honoré; sound,
broken chord. With marty austin
Lamar, Jasmine m. rush, tr istan
andré parks. about 2 hours 50
minutes. $35-$120. through march
15 at sidney harman hall, 610 F st.
nW. 202-547-1122.
shakespearetheatre.org.The congregants, fed by Sister
moore’s selfish ambitions and the
Boxers’ resentments, tire of mar-
garet’s rigid prescriptions for
faith. In their eyes, her earthly
troubles — the abandoned, alco-
holic husband, the increasingly
rebellious son (Antonio michael
Woodard) — signal a failure to
adhere to a higher moral stan-
dard. for Baldwin, margaret’s
cardinal sin is blocking the jazz-
musician ambitions of Woodard’s
David. Nothing is so deserving of
condemnation, it seems, as
thwarting the aspirations of an
artist.
White, who earlier this season
directed Aleshea Harris’s bracing
“What to Send Up When It Goes
Down” for Woolly mammoth
Theatre, reveals the breadth of
her talent here. “What to Send
Up” was fleet and intimate, a
memorial service to black victims
of police killings; “The Amen
Corner” is majestic and sprawl-
ing — a portrait, not a protest.
The speeches are impassioned,
sputtering expressions of bottled-
up feelings, and White allows
each of her major actors an op-
portunity, if you will, to take tooffering. “Classical theater” has
probably ceased to be a useful
term for limiting the thrust of a
company, even if Shakespeare
remains a forte. It’s high time for
a reexamination of what hewing
to classical forms means and, for
that matter, of what we consider
the canonical work that these
days might fill the Harman’s 774
seats.
In Sister margaret, the play-
wright created a figure of tragic
dimensions. That he made his
conflicted heroine a female spiri-
tual leader, at a time when the
trials of black women were hardly
front and center in American
drama, imbues “The Amen Cor-
ner” with a revolutionary spirit.
As embodied by Ellis, she’s a
charismatic figure who is as
prone to arrogance and over-
reach as a man. But she’s also
saddled with an expectation for
righteousness beyond anything a
man in her position would be
required to uphold. Her downfall
occurs in her fatal fog of absolute
certainty, about her own power,
as well as God’s.
THEATER REVIEW from C1
Gospel truth: ‘The Amen Corner’ resonates with energy
scott suchman/shakespeare theatre company
Mia Ellis, right, with J asmine M. Rush, is riveting as Sister Margaret Alexander, who leads a
storefront tabernacle in Shakespeare Theatre’s revival of James Baldwin’s “The Amen Corner.”In “Hunters,” Tiffany Boone,
above, plays a black-power
activist who is among the
mercenaries in search of Nazis.
Logan Lerman, center, with
Henry Hunter Hall, left, and
Caleb Emery, plays the latest
member of the team of
assassins.ozawa Changchien); and murray
and mindy markowitz (Saul ru-
binek and Carol Kane), a pair of
grandparents who are also Holo-
caust survivors.
The actors often seem to be
working from different notes. As
Jonah, Lerman has to juggle
deep grief, sidekick naivete, and
an astonishment at the violence
offerman and company employ
when they capture a Nazi. “The
Ta lmud is wrong,” offerman ex-
plains to Jonah. “Living well is
not the best revenge. You know
what the best revenge is? Re-
venge.”
for all his wisdom and self-
made wealth, Pacino’s character
is surprisingly one-note, more of
a presence than a marquee at-
traction; everyone else, includ-
ing olin as “the Colonel,” is at
risk of lapsing into caricature.
The two most interesting and
most realized characters are an
fBI a gent, millie malone (Jerrika
Hinton), who investigates the
death of a NASA employee
(someone gassed her in her bath-
room shower stall) and slowly
discovers the Nazi conspiracy;
and a young, white-supremacist
assassin, Travis Leich (Greg Aus-
tin), whose bloodlust exceeds the
coded directives given to him.
With so many plates spinning,
it’s easy for the writers and
actors to lose track of what kind
of show they’re making. “Hunt-
ers” treats its 1970s Nazis more
like vampires than war criminals
— friendly monsters who reveal
themselves only when backed
into a corner: an old lady watch-
ing game shows in her florida
condo; a doddering toyshop
owner in manhattan; a bank
president.
This is perhaps the most effec-
tive takeaway “Hunters” has to
offer, the unsettling notion that
the worst among us hide in plain
sight, or, in this case, could even
be infiltrating offerman’s team.
Somewhere in Episode 5, there
are signs that the show might be
hunting for more than just war
criminals — something deeper
within the human condition.
That pursuit gets more difficult
when morality becomes a mov-
ing target.
[email protected]Hunters (10 episodes) begins
streaming Fr iday on amazon prime.
(disclosure: amazon founder and
chief executive Jeff bezos owns the
Washington post.)shootings in synagogues and a
rise in anti-Semitic speech and
hate crimes. Because even the
most self-evident truths have
gone blurry, “ Hunters” can some-
times feel powered by contempo-
rary outrage.
But t he show, c reated b y David
Weil (with “Get out” and “Twi-
light Zone’s” Jordan Peele as an
enthusiastic executive produc-
er), also struggles to find a sure
footing between two disparate
tonal tracks. Quite a bit of “Hunt-
ers” dwells in that vividly imagi-
native space suggested by Quen-
tin Tarantino’s film “Inglourious
Basterds” (and more recently,
Ta ika Waititi’s “Jojo rabbit”), in
which Hitler’s lingering reach is
converted into a campy menace
and battled back with physical
skills, cunning espionage and
assorted heavily armed hokey-
ness.
At the same time, “Hunters”
frequently flashes back to the
Holocaust itself, where a young-
er version of Pacino’s character,
meyer offerman, survives Nazi
torture and begins to conceive of
a lasting revenge. In these
sc enes, the mood dial switches
to a “Schindler’s List” mode in
intensity and horror. Well into
the 10 episodes (five of which
were made available for this
review), you’ll have one scene
where disco kids shimmy to the
Bee Gees on the Coney Island
boardwalk, and then, in another
scene set 35 years earlier, it’s
point-blank executions at
Auschwitz.
The story focuses on Jonah
Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman), a
young Brooklyn man who works
in a comic-book store and hus-
tles drugs to support himself and
his safta (grandmother), ruth
(Jeannie Berlin), a Holocaust
survivor and Jonah’s only rela-
tive. A nighttime intruder shoots
and kills ruth in her easy chair,
leading a grief-stricken Jonah to
investigate the murder, which
leads him to offerman, who
explains, eventually, that ruth
was one of his best Nazi hunters.
We follow Jonah’s slow initia-
tion into offerman’s justice
le ague, members of which in-
clude a tough-talking nun, Sister
Harriet (Kate mulvany); a black-
power activist, roxy Jones (Tiffa-
ny Boone); a washed-up actor,
Lonny flash (Josh radnor); a
Vietnam vet, Joe To rrance (Louis
TV REVIEW from C1
‘Hunters’ takes a scattershot approach with its tone
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