"Puma" brings a wildcat to N.J. Repertory

Puma is the nickname that Erich Maria Remarque (author of All Quiet On The Western Front) christened Marlene Dietrich, the great love of his life.

He gave the same nickname to a beloved Lancia automobile that he was forced to abandon in Paris when both he and Dietrich were fleeing the Nazis.In "Puma," a world premiere running through April 3, the New Jersey Repertory Company tries to capture the impossible: the vampy, deep-throated actor and icon Dietrich. Using the diaries of Remarque and Dietrich, playwrights Julie Gilbert and Frank Evens piece together the love affair between this restless writer with a certain masochistic bent, and the stunning Dietrich who herself revels in self-torture.

 

Both are married to other people when they meet, of course. And through their three decade liaison, they continue with other lovers and spouses. About the only man Dietrich seems to refuse over the decades is "the baby brain," Adolf Hitler.

 

Ylfa Edelstein is given the almost impossible role of playing the charismatic Dietrich and she takes a mighty stab at it, drawing blood with her husky, sultry German accent, firing barbs and love at John FitzGibbon's melancholic Remarque. Pacing like a caged animal, she's alternately feeding him Vienna schnitzel and heart burn in their art deco love nest.

We first get a glimpse of her in Dietrich's trademark tuxedo, the one that started the rumers about her bisexuality, which is hinted at during the production with a few well placed kisses. She appears as a dream at Remarque's 65th birthday party in Manhattan, when he clues the audience in on who was the love of his life and "his poison of choice".

At the time and until his death five years later, he is married to Paulette Goddard, a balm to the wounds inflicted by Dietrich. Edelstein slithers across the stage, her sharp features and lithe physique calling up a hint of The Blue Angel, the German film where she crushes another man of letters. She does her best to destroy Remarque and later to entice Jimmy Stewart, her costar in Dustry Rides Again.

Edelstein's performance is commanding but can't completely conjure up Marlene, who during her lifetime won the affections of John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio, John F. Kennedy, Yul Brynner and even David Bowie. She does deliver quite a few amusing lines: she doesn't want to have a child with Erich because "my extended family already includes my child . . . my husband, . . . and your mistress."

She and FitzGibbon have plently of chemistry as they laze in bed together and spar. But it is FitzGibbon who steals the show. He is the heart of this production and the reason that it works. Making his costar shine, he is the suave narrator, who makes us believe that the two expatriates from Germany are the Flotsam (a title of his novel) who pine for their homeland and feel nothing more than debris washed up in their adopted countries.

He talks and connects directly to the audience. With his rich voice and convincing German accent, FitzGibbon adds a depth to the play that reveals the pain behind hedonistic Hollywood love affairs as well as the loneliness of war refugees.

Christopher Vettel has more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart, the callow Hollywood actor who turns Marlene's affections away from Remarque. In an ironic twist, he is forced by his handlers to date Paulette Goddard -- who later marries Remarque.

Natalie Wilder takes on the challenging job of playing three different foils to the leads:  Erich's first wife Jutta, Paulette Goddard, and Jimmy Stewart's wife Gloria. As Jutte, the long suffering German wife who always takes a back seat to Remarque's affairs, she is cold, sexless and severe. She turns on a dime to play Mrs. Jimmy Stewart, an innocent American taken in by Marlene's charm and killer instinct. As Goddard, she is the soothing wife, everything Marlene isn't.

The plot moves in scenes that have a cinematic quality, changing from Paris, to Hollywood, and to New York. Director SuzAnne Barabas orchestrates the actors like choreographed dances in the tight space.  In Barabas' hands, "Puma" generates complicated chemistry between the characters' long relationships spanning decades, sometimes as friends and sometimes as foes.

Jessica Parks' scenic design is a sleek, art deco room, at once the romantc hideaway for Marlene and Erich and then a trendy suite for entertaining lavishly.

If you want to be transported back to a more sophisticated, elegant era, where a world classs actress seduces a celebrated author, this might be the play for you. As Marlene is nursed by Erich, after an abortion and a desertion by Jimmy Stewart, she chooses that moment to be cruel to him.

"How could you, Puma?" he asks her. She answers, "It is only human."

But Erich gets the last word, "It's not human, Marlene -- it's you."

Playwrights Julie Gilbert and Frank Evans have chosen the right details from the memoirs of these intriguing legends from war-torn Europe and the desert we know as Hollywood.