The play is about a musicologist, Dr. Katherine Brandt who has spent her life specializing in Beethoven to a point where he dominates her conscious and sub-conscious life. As the play opens, we find Brandt has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and is slowly beginning to lose control of her bodily functions…but her lifelong study of Beethoven has her determined to solve an old mystery which has baffled colleagues for centuries: Namely, what was it about an ordinary little waltz that inspired one of Beethoven’s greatest works: The famous 33 Variations. She dedicates her last few coherent months on this research, which will possibly be her last music thesis, and is determined to complete the research which includes a months-long research trip to Bonn, Germany to the Beethoven archives The interesting twist: the play is set simultaneously in the present as well as the past (1819-1822); this is the era when Beethoven is slowly going deaf while composing some of his greatest triumphs including the 33 Variations. What is wonderful is: you don’t have to be a classical music enthusiast to appreciate this very human story.
The staging very complex, with scenes from the present overlapping into scenes from two centuries earlier, back and forth and sometimes happening onstage simultaneously. In another director’s hands, this may have been confusing and difficult to comprehend but Kaufman is a master. Rich and Famous tickets will take you back to when music was mostly classical, and appreciated.
