By Ron Cohen

 

Van Gogh’s Ear virtually engulfs you in the painter’s art and soul, with both sight and sound: incisive words, breathtaking visuals and ravishing music.

 

The production is the first of three being brought to the Pershing Square Signature Center this season by the Ensemble for the Romantic Century, now in its 17^th season. Exploring cultural icons of the Nineteenth Century, the goal of the organization – as founder and executive artistic director Eve Wolf writes in the show’s program – is to develop performances that are “more than a concert or a play and that can transport us to another time and place.” With Van Gogh’s Ear, it succeeds grandly.

 

Vincent Van Gogh is an ideal subject for ERC’s approach. The dramatic element of the show is basically a monologue by the artist, trying together excerpts from his intensely revealing letters to his dedicated brother and patron, Theo. Adapted by Wolf, the script is not a by-the-numbers narrative. Rather, Van Gogh talks about his roiling states of mind, his impoverished circumstances, his painting, and the landscapes in the French town of Arles, where he spent most of his last years. He also writes how the colors he is capturing on canvas can be compared to notes of music.

 

The spoken word is divided into sections, between which chamber music and songs of French composers contemporaneous with Van Gogh, are played by an assortment of musicians. The composers are Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Chausson and César Frank. The musical selections, sometimes introspective, sometimes searing and dramatic, reflect and amplify the moods expressed by Van Gogh in his monologues.

 

As portrayed by Carter Hudson (known for his lead role in the new television series Snowfall on the FX network), Van Gogh is a lanky, vulnerable presence. While his manner of speaking tends to be rather flat, it lends a piercing clarity to Van Gogh’s highly articulate and sometimes tortured ruminations. It also makes his outbursts of despair quite affecting.

 

Chad Johnson, Carter Hudson

 

As familiar as many elements of the story may be, the irony and sorrow are nevertheless beyond heart-rending when Van Gogh, one of the most influential figures in Western art, exclaims to his brother, “It worries me when I think that I have done so many pictures and drawings…without ever selling one. My pictures are valueless, it is agonizing to me that there is no demand for them… but only because you suffer for it.”

 

 

Hudson also makes enthrallingly credible the climactic – and fairly graphic enactment – of the celebrated incident toward the end of the first act when Van Gogh, in a fit of madness, cuts off a part of his ear, presenting it to a woman working in the local brothel.

 

Carter Hudson and Renee Tatum                        photos by Shirin Tinati

 

Chad Johnson portrays Theo. It’s a role without dialogue, but Johnson’s stance and mood vividly portray the love that Theo feels for his brother. In the elegant staging of director Donald T. Sanders, Johnson’s Theo often inhabits one side of the stage, with Holden’s Vincent talking to him from the other side, the space between them becoming a palpable presence as well, filling with familial affection.

 

More impressively, Johnson commands the stage in several musical interludes, singing several numbers in a beautifully expressive tenor.  

 

Further contributing in a major way to the musicality is Renée Tatum, embodying both Theo’s wife and the brothel worker, both non-speaking roles. Her mezzo-soprano brings both vibrant eloquence and Wagnerian power to her songs. Notable in a brief appearance is Kevin Spirtas as the somewhat supercilious head of the psychiatric hospital to which Van Gogh is sent after his breakdown.

 

Also deserving endless kudos are the six musicians, not only for their supreme musicianship but their attentive, totally unobtrusive presence during the spoken portions of the play. They are violinists Henry Wang and Yuval Herz; Chieh-Fan Yiu, viola; Timotheos Petrin, cello, and pianists Max Barros and Renana Gutman.

 

Other inherent facets of the production are the period costumes for the actors and the somewhat surreal garb for the instrumentalists, both by Vanessa James, who also did the striking set. Adding yet another key dimension are the eye-filling projections: Van Gogh’s paintings and segments of them are depicted on various parts of the set, sometimes gliding hypnotically across it, adding to the impact of the music. There are the cypress trees, the sunflowers, the night sky filled with blazing stars, the bandaged self-portrait, all signature elements of Van Gogh’s work. David Bengali did the projection design, and Beverly Emmons the lighting.

 

In the show’s final moments – after the offstage gunshot marking Van Gogh’s suicide at age 37 -- projected onto the set is the artist’s painting of his own well-worn boots, a touching representation of both the man’s humanity and his genius, both of them captured so intensely in this wonderfully artful production.

 

Off-Broadway play-cum-chamber concert

Playing at the Irene Diamond Stage, The Pershing Square Signature Center

480 West 42nd Street

212-279-4200

TicketCentral.com for individual tickets; romanticcentury.org for season subscription

Playing to September 10