Open: 05/04/2012- Close: 05/12/2012
The Waste Land
Reviewed for TheaterOnline.com By: Aurin Squire
The Straddler Company bursts onto the stage with a new adaptation of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land." In the past few years there have been several performing arts groups and companies who have taken their shot at Eliot's epic work that defined the 20th century. The Toronto-based group bluemouth took a shot at combining Eliot's poem with "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" several years ago in "What the Thunder Said." The 2006 ensemble production was a riveting, robust production on site in the iconic old AT&T Building off Canal Street. But where "What the Thunder Said" was big cast, sprawling and robust, the Straddler's take feels intimate and a show among friends. The 3-person cast take on this daunting challenge with ferocious determination.
The actors and director work with the vivid, jagged text to surprising results that's sure to spark different feelings. "The Waste Land" opens with two figures emerging from the darkness: a sailor and a musician. Played by Todd Pate, the sailor bounds across the stage with quirky explosive energy. Pate embodies the electric live wire that Eliot intended in his experimental tale of a post World War I world filled with decay, ruins, and romance. Greg Bennetts plays the role of the Musician and is outfitted in a Las Vegas white suit, red shirt, and dark sunglasses. The musician doesn't speak but taps on the drums, plays the trombone and provides the piece's tone and rhythm in certain places. The last two enter is Tiresias, the blind prophet in T.S. Eliot's tale that is taken from mythology. Actress Carol Thomas tackles this role with abandon, portraying the male and female energy of the doomed seer. Sailor begins the prologue with a vigorous, jangly, improvised dance to rapacious drum solo that is pre-recorded. The musician sits in front of his drums staring off straight ahead as the Sailor goes into a spastic dancing fit over that looks as if he's caught 'holy ghost' and is having an allergic reaction. I'm guessing that director Dan Monaco intentionally wanted the movements to be sad, absurd, messy, and end with a performer waiting for applause. The Sailor then guides a rambling Tiresias out of the darkness and to the stage. The seer begins speaking with his back to the audience before the Sailor turns her around. Tiresias is wearing both a green dress and a red sash with black tights underneath. Her face is painted with a white cross as she stumbles through the poem's opening. The play then hops around to various sections of "The Waste Land" as Tiresias and Sailor transform into lovers, competitors, and many other characters. At times the text interpretation was challenging and I couldn't figure out where the action was taking place. There were times where I felt completely lost in the words and perhaps that was the point. As the director, Dan Monaco has his hands full trying to tell this wild tale in a flowing, succinct way. Many times he succeeds with surprising results as the audience laughed at jokes and sighed at melancholic moments. At other times, the audience just that there looking lost. Some of this might have been helped by giving the characters a more conventional backstory for their emotional beats and pacing. Having seen many choreopoems on stage and worked with poetic texts, backstory clarity seems to be one of the keys to making experimental poetry sharper. The audience can walk away with many different interpretations, but the actors must be moving boldly with one choice. In "The Waste Land" the characters seemed to stop in mid-scene and switch characters and beats as well. Still this can still work if the narrators are given signs of being unreliable storytellers or are channeling in different beings. In future incantations, it would be an exciting opportunity to explore more specific choices that are then carried through in a narrative arc. This doesn't require linear storytelling but a specific focus on where Straddler wishes to start the audience and where they wish us to end up; how we feel about our journey should be up to each person. Still, "The Waste Land" is an exciting work that feels like it has room to grow. Monaco, cast, and Straddler should be commended for bringing this fun and unique interpretation to the stage. As a theatregoer, I hope to see more of the Straddler's work in the future. Venue: Cell Theatre : 338 West 23rd Street |
