The Room (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Initially I was going to write an elaborate kinda/sorta not-quite-review of this production by the esteemed Wooster Group of Harold Pinter's first major play, The Room.  Samuel French, the play publisher, issued a strange demand regarding this production, evidently as a result of some feedback from the Pinter estate.  Maybe.  We don't really know.  Their demand, weirdly enough, was that the show get no reviews.

Well, it really isn't up to Samuel French (nor the Wooster Group, nor the REDCAT theater where the show plays) to make that call.

Now that Samuel French has refused to authorize an extension of this production, it hardly matters.  So here is my unabashed reaction.

Pinter rightly won a reputation as one of the English language's premiere playwrights of his era, the master of what some dubbed the "comedy of menace."  The Room pretty much encapsulates this.  A man and woman in a room they evidently rent putter about, chatting about pretty much nothing.  Well, the woman does.  The man remains resolutely silent.  His wife(?) seems a pack of nerves, but fiercely trying to hide it by what might be called "reassuring" talk about how comfortable they are.  Yet she's also afraid--overtly of the room below, evidently recently vacated.

What precisely anyone in the play is afraid of, or what makes them angry (or worried, cautious, excited, etc.) remains unstated and unexplained--deliberately so. Hence the menace, all the more vivid given the period in which the play first appeared, the 1950s when success and conformity were treated as gods.

Herein lies a bit of problem, which director Elizabeth LeCompte approached with an intriguing slant.  We live in a world two generations past that of the play, one post 9/11 as well as the Cold War and dozens of other perception-altering events. How then, make The Room as vivid as in the past?

This production did not change the play as one might think from Samuel French's reaction.  Rather it dove a bit deeper into the text, adding the occasional  stylistic flourish.  Stage directions, for example, were read aloud even as the cast performed them.  The sound effects emerged not from a sound booth out of sight, but from technicians on stage.  Instead of a traditional box set, we got a rather Eastern approach to the acting area.  A few lines were even sung!  So what we the audience experienced hardly resembled that audiences saw previously--yet remained utterly the same text, focusing upon the same issues and ideas, seeking to invoke the same emotions.

Not sure it completely succeeds, at least not directly.  What this production and cast (including Kate Valk, Scott Renderer, Ari Fliakos, Suzy Roche and Philip Moore) did accomplish was forcing me to look at the play anew.  In fact, getting it out of my mind has proven a tiny bit of a challenge.  Honestly, for that alone they deserve plenty of applause!

The Room plays at the REDCAT in the Disney Center downtown 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles at 8:30pm until Saturday February 13 then at 3pm on Sunday February 14.

La Mélancolie des Dragons (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

As a rule, I always enjoy performances at downtown's REDCAT. La Mélancolie des Dragons certainly marks no change in that pattern. Describing the performance however will prove a little tricky. Again, no change in the pattern. Shows in this venue rarely turn out safe or predictable. Mostly they come across as a ritual, with as much power and beauty as a high mass if you don't understand Latin--provided you prove willing to allow the experience itself to do what it will rather than trying to re-shape the event into a form more comfortable. Less eccentric. More linear.

Vivarium Studios, which created La Mélancolie des Dragons (The Melancholy of Dragons--a title somehow absolutely perfect, although I cannot tell you why) emerged in 2003 Paris, aiming to create theatrical innovation. It became known for subtly, relatively simple sets, and exploration of ideas that critique modern society. The set up certainly seems simple enough. We see on stage a snow-covered landscape, trees taking up the edge of the space. A car, pulling a kind of van in back, seems stuck in the snow until a woman in a bicycle arrives. Her name is Isobel, and she soon figures out what is wrong with the car. It needs a part. Sadly, the local garage (she knows the guy who runs it) cannot get that part for seven days. 

So they are stuck. It seems. They don't seem heartbroken that their "tour" is to be interrupted.  All six long-haired guys have a distinct 'heavy metal' air to them. They offer to show Isobel their show and she agrees.

I can safely say what happened surprised me. But not with any kind of real shock. For a time I wondered if this nice and patient lady (she seemed middle aged) was about to become a victim of some horrific crime. After all the six "bandmembers" did feel...odd. Equally odd proved the 'attractions' they offered.

But no crime proceeded to occur. And by the time anyone said anything even vaguely ominous we had come to know these men, to realize what kind of camp or event they were offering. A mini-oddyssey as it were, an exploration of the epic in the simple, the small.  A series of wonders to behold in what some might call the most childish of pleasures. Well, why not? The grin awoken by a bubble machine. The fun of walking amid man-made smoke. A joke everyone 'gets' and can therefore enjoy, even if silly. Instead of the biggest, fastest, loudest, most dangerous roller coaster of all time (until the next multi-million dollar one gets made) we share (with Isobel, our surrogate for the evening) ordinary wonders, seemingly forgotten or just ignored.

Even something as simple as a plastic bag can be as frightening as the most expensive CGI orc army. Just a wig hanging on a string near a fan while music plays can create an invisible rock star--to someone with a willingness to imagine, to dream.

Shouldn't that be all of us?

La Mélancolie des Dragons as of this writing has completed its short run at the REDCAT, appropriate in some way because--like all things--each experience by definition remains ephemeral. On the other hand, its company has performed the show before, presumably will do so again. I for one hope you get a chance to see it or some other piece by Vivarium Studios.  For the record, I hope the same for myself. My applause was long the night I saw it. Nor was I alone. Nor was I the last to stop clapping.

The Institute of Memory (TIMe) (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

The Institute of Memory (TIMe) continues to haunt my own memory of the performance, which marks a pretty good indication of its success artistically. I went with a friend and we barely discussed details afterwards. We jointly agreed this needed digesting.

Imagine if you will a life. Not as we imagine a life--or as we all too often imagine one. The beginnings, middles and ends (yes I know I used plurals) are there, some of them known. But answers in many ways elude. Questions remains, forming frankly more of this specific life than we like to dwell upon. What after all can we know about anyone, save what is remembered? By individuals or by recordings one way or another. Medical files. Personal letters. These days the every increasing archive in digital format we all create with each keystroke or mouse click.

This review of example.

photo courtesy of the artist

Or this blurb:  A multi-dimensional visual design sets the stage for award-winning director and media artist Lars Jan’s theatrical exploration of the blurring of short and long term memories, and how “remembering” is changing now and into the future. With two performers, high-tech 3D renderings, original music and a collage of found and composed text, TIMe traces the transformation of archives from physical to digital structures, and the corresponding evolution of national and personal remembering and privacy through the story of director Lars Jan’s father — an enigmatic Cold War operative and privacy-obsessed misanthrope.

Appropriately enough, this sounds intriguing without really saying much. Appropriate because this show really does capture and enact its central metaphor--our memories remain fluid, unclear, full of insight yet also little finality. In a way we the audience intrude. In another way our entire society intrudes (although frankly this last seems more a minor contemplation along the them rather than anything like a bullet point or nice clear clue).

photo courtesy of the artist

Ryan Masson and Annie Saunders remain on stage for the length of this production from Early Morning Opera. Along the way they become or pretend to be or give voice to a variety of different characters, many of which remain unidentified. Others seem little more than archetypes or the voice of some official documents, such as the medical staff where Henryk Ryniewicz finally ended his days. Presumably. The gentleman in question's paranoia infected me after a time. Here was a man who named his only son "Lars" because he thought it sounded simultaneously German, Russian, Scandinavian, maybe American. A gift for his (presumably) only child--a name that might help him survive World War III and the purges to come.

Paranoid? Yes. Oh, yes. But not manic. Nor, as it happens, completely unjustified. The man had seen Poland under Nazi rule. He fell under surveillance of Polish Intelligence during the Soviet Era.

He seemed like a difficult man. A sad one. With a real appreciation of little pleasures, like watching his son climb a tree. Or so was the image Masson and Saunders created with the help of multiple designers and technicians bringing to life the real Lars Henrik (note the changed spelling) Jan's writing.

photo courtesy of the artist

In the end I cannot say for certain I understand this piece. Not because it baffled me but due to how deep and complex the subject matter--a single human life, understood and explained as such can only be, via other single human lives with their own agendas. The son. The performer. The audience member. Yet a whole in its own way, one that has made itself part of my life. I am changed. Entranced and frustrated, yes. In almost equal measure. Mind and heart, language and image, Apollo and Dionysus.

The Institute of Memory (TIMe) finishes its run at the REDCAT today at 3pm.  Another run of performances are scheduled for Portland in September, then in Boston in Winter, 2016. Hopefully more dates shall follow. I cannot but hope more people will share this experience.

The Great War (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Hotel Modern is a Dutch theater collective that has pioneered what has been called "live action animation." In effect they use tiny dolls and props in front of small cameras which project the moving image onto a large screen. The audience is there as they do this in real time, with practical special effects and voice-overs and sound recreations thrown into the mix. If that sounds intriguing, please believe me when I say the result ends up far more than merely that!

The Great War was a piece that performed at downtown's REDCAT theater. The prologue began as little more than a relatively fun introduction to events which immediately preceded the first world war. After that, actors read letters from soldiers on the front, telling their loved ones about life in the trenches, aboard submarines, guarding POWs, etc. At the same time we watch images created to demonstrate what the letters describe.

Here's one scene that gives some idea of the power of such a seemingly simple idea. We watch on screen gigantic hands place one tiny soldier after another, face down, on an expanse of wet soil. At last, hardly any soil remains to be seen. Then hands pour some pale green gelatin over all this, then they scoop in to blend it all together into a mush. A sky in the background shows sunset. Soon, lights fade on the tiny landscape, which via the camera and screen certainly look life-size. A pair of filthy legs, wearing (tiny) military style boots and army fatigues, walk one wear step at a time through that mud. Moonlight allows us to see it. And the soldier's voice, whispering in freezing terror, recounts what happened. He got lost. At sunset. In no man's land, between the trenches of men armed to the teeth with machine guns. Wandering in the freezing cold hour after hour, not daring to make a sound. He describes most of all realizing he is walking upon the remains of countless dead, in total darkness, and how he can identify each body part as he walks. Arm. Chest. Head.  What can he do but try and not think about it?

I found myself trying to do the same.  The whole performance actually felt as if somehow I'd been plugged into some kind of virtual reality, one just real enough to become emotionally real. The visceral impact of people actually screaming over recreated artillery bursts reached my bones. So so the smell of the flames. The darkness of the theater--something so natural to me it feels like home--felt heavy, cold, full of careless and unimaginable menace.

Rarely have I felt so moved by a piece of theater, and never before by what was in effect a puppet show. But this company has found a wildly original way to create as profound an experience as a High Mass to the most devout of believers.

Zero Hour (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Anyone with much of any knowledge of the Pacific Theater in World War II has heard the name Tokyo Rose.  Initially this name assigned to a variety of English-speaking women who made broadcasts on behalf of the Japanese Empire. The actual case of what happened after the war is the stuff of almost mundane tragedy.  In 1949 one specific woman was convicted of nine counts of treason for making propaganda on behalf of the nation's enemies.  Later investigations indicated many witnesses were pressured to lie under oath.  President Ford issued a pardon for the real woman.

Zero Hour: Tokyo Rose's Last Tape uses this situation as a way to explore something. Names and details are changed in a manner that at times reaches the level of the surreal, especially during long multimedia/dance pieces.

This, incidentally, may be the single greatest strength and weakness of what in most ways counts as a compelling, even fascinating performance. Pacing and rhythm.  I suspect (cannot really say for sure) that were I more steeped in Japanese theatrical forms, the long multimedia sections would seem to flow with the "story" more smoothly.  As it is, I felt distracted.

But overall I also felt very interested and moved.  The play ends up focused upon four characters:  Jane Sugawa (Ami Kobayashi) an experienced announcer forced to work for the Japanese and also train various typists to announce for the program Zero Hour, Annie Oguri Moreno (Hinako Arao), a Japanese American visiting relatives when the war broke out who becomes tagged and scapegoated as THE Tokyo Rose, Daniel Yamada (Yohei Matsukado) a Nissei US soldier whose life becomes entwined with the mystery of an unidentified "sixth announcer" who made questionable broadcasts, and Toshiya Shiomi (Sogo Nishimura) the sound engineer at Zero Hour who also proves a formidable if unknown grand master of chess.

The play moves back and forth, ultimately proving not so much about the injustice of one naive young woman becoming a scapegoat, nor the guilt of two men--one who betrayed her, the other who failed to save her.  Rather it seems more than anything a rumination on obsession and identity.  We begin with seeing five young Asian women rendered all but indistinguishable, in a circle, wearing identical hats that obscure their faces.  A voiceover of G.I.s hear the voice of Tokyo Rose and speculate/gossip over this voice they hear, calling them "fellow orphans of the Pacific." Only later do the hats come off, and individual voices emerge.  Long before the climax we the audience have learned to easily distinguish between these voices, while by play's end we hear American judges insist there's no difference between these individuals, that no one can hear the variations in voice.

Even that doesn't really touch on the essence of this particular show, however.  That would be merely a comment about racism, after all.  No, Zero Hour: Tokyo Rose's Last Tape goes deeper. Much deeper, because rather than simply placing blame we're left at the end with evidence our "hero" is guilty of the same error--projecting a desire somewhere so much he cannot even conceive of the truth.  As a lovely final touch, we the audience are left in much the same situation as he.  A central mystery of events--specifically why a certain someone did what he did--remains without a solution.  Then what are we left with, but objectifying what we do not understand, imposing our own desires onto the unknown?

The Japan Society produced tour of Zero Hour includes:

• The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC
• Asian Arts & Culture Center at Towson University, Towson, MD
• Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Toronto, Canada
• REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), Los Angeles, CA

Half Life (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

I can honestly say going to the REDCAT theatre downtown always proves a treat. Most recently my good fortune included getting to view Half Life, an enthralling performance blending a multitude of effects with performance that left a very real impact.

Amid live electronic music we watch a stage that fundamentally consists of two performers and two screens which use projection to create a series of varying yet somehow connected dreamscapes.  One initially seems urban and technological, focusing almost entirely upon the ma-made made, upon surfaces and (sometimes) attempts at communication with others.  The second gives us a whirlwind of color and nature, from forests to storm-riddled skies, to the soil where roots seem to envelope all to a beach with a rising tide--then deep under the waves.  A friend asked me to describe it in as few words as possible and my answer ended up being "Something like Cirque du Soleil and The Matrix." Which doesn't really capture the show, but gives a hint of what you might legitimately expect.

Dazzling. Compelling. Beautiful. Moving. All these adjectives and more the show earned. The story (in so much as there might be one)  seemed to me about a conflict within a woman--a modern, social, conscious and more-or-less Apollonian side living a distinct life from a side of sensations, bright colors and swirling living creatures from clouds of butterflies to fleets of various fish. They each did a kind of dance (or at least movement) punctuated by singing. All this takes place between two shifting sets of scrim onto which a wonderful moving tapestry of images are projected--with all the sometimes-disturbing beauty inherent in some dreams. It sucks you in.

Having said all that let me address something of a problem. Here is from the official description of the performance:

A highly visual and emotional experience of fierce urgency, the latest multimedia production from Cloud Eye Control is an imagistic, visceral work inspired by the nervous fear felt in the wake of natural or man-made disasters. The starting point for the creation of Half Life was blog entries by women who experienced the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis, inspiring the artists to explore the psychological fallout of global disaster, and how it affects our emotions and imaginations. The Los Angeles-based collaborators— Miwa Matreyek, Anna Oxygen, and Chi-wang Yang —bring their signature mix of projected animation, live performance and music to summon the unseeable forces that govern our collective sense of personal safety and control.

 Honestly, I cannot say this is what I saw. Which hardly qualifies as a damnation, but it does indicate that at least one viewer--one far from straight-laced, fairly intelligent, appreciative of the intuitive and a regular theatre-goer of very many types--simply did not "get' what they say was their intent. Which could be down to me, let us be fair. In terms of that, I felt the ending didn't quite work--when the two women finally meet and warily interact, they decide to go their separate ways. But why? If presented as a mystery intended for the audience to resolve to their own satisfaction--okay. Bravo even! Yet it didn't feel that way. It felt as if the piece wound down without bringing the inherent crisis to a head.

But the show was well done in so very many ways, I'm perfectly willing to admit the fault is in yours truly. Maybe.  Besides, I'm certainly left a bit in awe of the producing entity Cloud Eye Control, hoping very much to see other works of theirs in the future.