Heat and Cold: Theater in the Wind Chill City

The thermometer dropped to FOUR BELOW (F!), but that didn’t stop Caffeine Theatre’s Like the Moon Behind the Clouds or Red Orchid Theatre’s Fatboy from continuing as scheduled. The amount of small theater on any given night in the City of Broad Shoulders never ceases to amaze me. That said . . . . . .

First, the bad news: Like the Moon Behind the Clouds represents Caffeine Theatre’s move to the Cultural Center – an absolutely fantastic building that requires that I mention that Shepley, Rutan, & Coolidge (not to mention Tiffany & Co,) did a great job in 1897. They were, however, designing a library, not a theater. The awkwardly shaped space with even worse lighting (converted office space?) suffers from noise bleed-through and an unwieldy aspect ratio that would hurt even the best of work, and that’s rarely achieved. Not an auspicious beginning. But the real issue is that this script is a trainwreck. I think that it was supposed to be about an expatriate Italian woman in mid-century Japan discovering lessons from two Japanese woman writers, one ancient and one nineteenth-century, the first of which influenced the second. That seemed to be the idea. However, wrapped behind a couple dozen ever-shifting characters that may or may not be only symbolic, a play within a play within a play, a score or so of themes introduced and then dropped never to return (“would it bother you if I were?” - Where did that come from?) specters returning from the dead, and some characters that exist only in puppet form, it was kind of hard to tell for sure. Pervading the whole was another story of how terribly hard it is to be a writer. (Especially a woman one; but identity politics in this post-Obama world?)

Perhaps the worst proverb foisted on the world of letters in the last century or so was the eternal dictum to “write what you know,” which seems to have produced reams and reams of copy on the life of writers. The more accurate version is probably “write what everyone knows,” which not only gets closer to the point of the whole enterprise, but might thin down the pool of entrants. Once, just once, I’d like to see someone produce a blow-by-blow epic of the daily struggles and passions of a plumber trying to be a plumber. Likely a better story.

A bad plan is impossible to follow well, but there were some bright spots. Director Jennifer Shook still understands movement and positioning, and at least attempted to distinguish between the myriad characters with shifting costume and the occasional inspired idea. (Silhouettes behind the screen: good call.) The real stand-outs were the supporting cast. Stacy Magerkurth’s list of characters (Egg, et al) were the highlight of the stage. Still in the good form she was in Dona Rosita, even her fourteen-inch puppet was more absorbing that many of the full-sized actors. Stephen Loch also delivered an excellent turn as Frank . . . or whomever else he was supposed to be at any given moment. To his eternal credit it was a breath of fresh air whenever the dialogue returned to an actor that remembered that characters are supposed to be people. Tom Bateman shifted oddly from an absorbing Nakarai to a paper-thin Lucrezio, but never quite as good as he was in Amerikafka, which can probably be laid at the feet of the script. Healthier than in Dona Rosita, and better as a redhead, (there are Italian redheads?) Dana Black still leaves me scratching my head as the lead (Carla, the Italian writer.) Blessed to be one of the few on stage with only one role, it probably could have been played with a little more than the single look of determined innocence. (But still that script . . . . . . )

These are competent people, and are capable of great theater (Cocktail Party?) If only the words were better. (That and maybe Stacy Magerkurth & Jason Beck for the next one. Whatever happened to Bridget Dehl?)

And now for something completely different . . . . .

Five minutes in a cab and a world apart is Fatboy at Red Orchid Theatre in Old Town. A re-tooling of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi that set Paris on its ear once upon a time, the show is broad and brusque, as in-your-face obnoxious as LTMBTC was evasive, but carried off with power and conviction. The story is simple – a fable really – crude slob takes over the world though violence and lack of inhibition, only to fall victim to the consequences of his myopia. You’ve got to give credit to Guy VanSwearingen (Director, &c, &c): a man who not only mans his own box office, but announces before the show that he’s the guy to be blamed for what ensues (and sits with the audience,) deserves a tip of the hat.

It’s the balance of shock and wit that makes Fatboy worth seeing. Here is an aggressive, loud, over-the-top politico-social-moral fable that works because it has the sense to co-opt the audience almost from the word go. Steve Pickering’s rotund bully proceeds from sloth to squabble to mayhem as not at all likeable, but loveable in the mold of a good bawdy Shakespeare character. The whole troop is exactly what they need to be. Symbols, really; types as attitudes rubbing against one another to bring home a point. It’s a heavy point, that might will overcome right unless it’s resisted, but not a point heavily made. Vulgarity and violence are leavened with inspired humor, and Doug Vickers’ Judge steals the show for his whole scene. (“I’ll take the fifth”) In other hands this might have been unbearable, but here it’s both good fun and an inspiration for activism in a combination that almost doesn’t seem possible.

In a larger venue there would be nothing but good to say, but in the super-intimate house of Red Orchid it’s almost a little too much. The coda at the end, while in accord with the whole idea, is almost frightening in a room and a crowd this small. The electric tension and nervousness of an audience trying to say “look, we’re on your side here,” was one of the strangest moments I’ve ever experienced. After all, everyone has to walk out the same door. The total silence, I suppose, represents a form of success.

I’m Fatboy, and I’m everywhere.

Can’t wait until Summer.

Scale and Politics

A quick comparative observation: For the last several weeks, I’ve been hearing incessantly about how allowing Iowa and New Hampshire a disproportionate share of influence in U.S. elections (not that it means all that much) is a good thing because it retains the “retail politics” that allows for a personal connection and a chance for the underdog (I guess an exceptionally well-leisured underdog) to get to make an impression on the voters individually.

This seems like another scale / distribution argument. Something like this: Well, if we have a bloated, centralized system where overriding macro-decisions are made by people that have no connection to the life of the average citizen, at least someone gets a chance to actually meet these people and stand in as proxy-average at the manageable scale of, say, a city council election. Seems like a tacit acknowledgement of the problems of centralization and aggregation.

Stupid, arbitrary, and awkward; but I’ll take it over an entirely media-mediated process any day.

Anonymity and Urbanism

I, for one, wish every neighborhood had the essentials of life within walking distance. Even so, there is a countervailing impulse just within my individual values system: the desire to be anonymous. Density of services – i.e. walkability – tends to create limits to choice. This results in repeat visits to the same streets and establishments over and over; it’s the “regular” phenomenon. Beyond the additional costs of personnel to staff all of these neighborhood retail, (or service, or whatever,) establishments; the structure (smaller catchment areas) seems to dictate a smaller number of clientele, and an increased relationship between the person and the business.

This reduced choice is a variant of the church problem. It has two effects that need to be considered. First, if your choices are limited to the walking radius, you have a very limited number of options, but you know each of them quite well. While fine from a customer service / relationship standpoint, it puts one in a situation where you can’t leave a bad option without radically altering your lifestyle. The neighborhood deli is a wonderful thing – unless it happens to be horrid. (Those of you who’ve worked in a large office building with ground-floor food service will understand.) This gets back to what our friend Jim said about abundance and choice allowing better individual decisions.

The second issue is, without the vast increases in available area allowed by high-speed individual transportation, one has to frequent the limited number of businesses within your walking circle. This means that you become known. While many people love to be recognized and recorded, I’ve always been of the opinion that half of the reason for living in city of any size is the privacy of being a face in the crowd. In our data-mining society, it’s a rare luxury of being truly independent and unknown. The Cash Nexus decried by Marx is sometimes the best protection you have in your individual liberties. No one can control what they can’t track. Besides, who wants to have to develop awkward relationships with basically random people? (This is where I part ways with the Bowling Alone people.)

While the idea of the tight-knit neighborhood has many things to recommend it, there are still structural considerations to take into account before we declare it the ultimate ideal.