SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
A CurtainUp Review
Life and Times: Episodes 1-4
| "Personnel is being hired
for the Theater of Oklahoma! The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma
is calling you! It’s calling today only! If you miss this
opportunity, there will never be another! Anyone thinking of his
future, his future is with us! All welcome!".— excerpt
from Kafka’s novel Amerika and inspiration for the New
York-based company Nature Theater of Oklahoma.
|
Scene from Episodes 3 and 4
|
Conceived and directed by the company’s co-artistic directors Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, this Soho Rep production made its New York premiere at the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festiva but has a post-festival life through February 2nd.
Defying easy categorization, this avant-garde work follows in the spirit of their past explorations, including No Dice, a radical riff on Romeo and Juliet, and the brut opera Poetics. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Jacques Rivette, Kazimir Melevich, and Elevator Repair Company, Liska and Copper (husband and wife in real-life) use a stream-of consciousness style that is not unlike James Joyce and Gertrude Stein’s.
Although this is a mighty heap of theater, you still aren’t getting the whole shebang here. In fact, Lisa and Copper have six more episodes to incorporate into this mock-epic. They are estimating that the entire project will be fully-realized in a decade, give or take a few years.
What you now get is four of the projected ten episodes. Each has its own framing device. Episode One (three and a half hours with no intermission) focuses on birth through age 8, played out on an immaculate white stage and backdrop. Episode Two (two hours with no intermission) is a study in gray that sallies forth into puberty and dance parties. Episode Three and Four (two and a half hours with no intermission) shifts into young adulthood and is contextualized as a murder-mystery, complete with old-fashioned furniture and decor.
You can see the serial event in installations over several evenings or as a 10-hour marathon show. The marathon is exhausting — even with a light buffet dinner (hotdogs, knishes, trimmings, and iced tea from Katz’s delicatessen) and dessert (brownies and hot chocolate), which is congenially served by the troupe.
There’s a fitting epic sweep to this work, with the length of each episode roughly corresponding to the real-time of the original telephone conversation, including its breaks. Everything said on stage is a verbatim rendering of the taped conversation, including the verbal fillers (“ums,” “ohs”, “uhs”), spontaneous revisions, and non sequitors. Nothing has been nimbly reassembled, or stretched a la Mark Twain. In short, there is nothing bogus about this work
This is an ensemble effort, with company members (Ilan Bachrach, Elisabeth Conner, Gabel Eiben, Anne Gridley, Robert M. Johanson, Matthew Korahais, Julie LaMendola, Alison Weisgall, and Kristin Worrall) theatricalizing the text through dance, movement, and speech. Those who go to the marathon will no doubt be amazed at how this troupe can robustly sustain the narrative, hour after hour, episode after episode and still appear to have energy to burn.
You may wonder how the regurgitation of an ordinary person’s life story could possibly hold your attention for ten hours. After all, most life stories, truth be told, are pretty much a snooze. The answer lies in the gifted company itself. In the hands of Nature Theater, the unremarkable becomes remarkable, and Worrall’s story strangely becomes everyman’s. Regardless of your gender, race, or social background, you are likely identify with the female protagonist. Whether recounting her getting braces in junior high, smoking her first cigarette, or having her first existential moment, the corps captures life on the wing via their vocal inflections, melodramatic flourishes, or dead pan expressions.
Virtuosity is not a goal here. All the performers are, in fact, rather amateur-ish dancers. Though most can maneuver their bodies well-enough through space, have solid voices, and clearly possess strong dramatic instincts, nobody is really a standout (or tries to upstage a cast mate). However, what they do have is passion with a capital “P.” They also are giving flesh and blood to the company aesthetic developed by Liska and Copper, which is to perform what they don’t know how to perform.
The performers dress in shifts and multi-colored Adidas outfits and sneakers for the first Episodes, and wear more traditional clothes for the later scenes. As for props, there are small hand-held hoops that add color to the physical routines, red bouncy balls that are tossed about, and reversible cardboard squares with bold primary colors that the actors flip from front to back, and vice versa. Except for the last episodes, where the set design has a gothic-look, the stage is extremely bare with spotlights blazing overhead or a large silver sphere suspended from the flies.
Judging from the faces all around me at the marathon performance I attended, Life and Times had almost everybody engaged. Each episode has the audience, wondering what rabbit will be pulled out of the hat next. If there is any theme to the evening, it would have to be the project’s inclusive title: life and times. Not only do you listen to Worrall’s’s story unfolding, but you inevitably reconnoiter your own life. This epic is really about being a middle-class American, and looking back into the mists and myths of our past so that we can better understand our life.
The finale tackles the hot potato of religion. The narrator, in a sincere tone, recounts the protagonist’s first holy communion, her first confession, and her attempts at reciting alone the Our Father prayer to the priest in the confessional box. Even if you usually shy away from formal religion, this final scene served as a warm benediction to the long evening.
| Life and Times: Episodes 1-4 Conceived and directed by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper Produced by Soho Rep Based on a telephone conversation with Kristin Worrall Cast: Ilan Bachrach, Elisabeth Conner, Gabel Eiben, Anne Gridley, Robert M. Johanson, Matthew Korahais, Julie LaMendola, Alison Weisgall, and Kristin Worrall. Design: Peter Nigrini Original Music: Robert M. Johanson, Julie LaMendola, and Daniel Gower Stage Manager: Elizabeth Moreau The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street Tickets: $30 per episode & $70 for marathon performance. Phone: 212/967-7555 or visit www.publictheater.org From 1/16/13; opening 1/22/13; closing 2/02/13. Running time: approximately10 hours; 15 minutes including three breaks (dinner and dessert served). Reviewed by Deirdre Donovan based on press performance of 1/20/13 |
| REVIEW FEEDBACK Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V): Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email. . .also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review. Visit Curtainup's Blog Annex For a feed to reviews and features as they are posted add http://curtainupnewlinks.blogspot.com to your reader Curtainup at Facebook . . . Curtainup at Twitter Subscribe to our FREE email updates: E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message. If you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country. |
Slings & Arrows- view 1st episode free
Anything Goes Cast RecordingOur review of the show
Book of Mormon -CDOur review of the show
