Archangels Don't Play Pinball
Capitol Hill Arts Center
Through July 30.
This rambunctious production of Dario Fo's early farce is consistently amusing, but even as I laughed, I couldn't help but feel disoriented. The funniest scenes—an impromptu game of musical pants, a slapstick struggle with a dapper coat rack—are only barely related to the plot (such as it is) or the play's preoccupations (whatever they're worth). It's true that the play's satire isn't particularly pointed; I have a difficult time believing the absurd-bureaucracy theme was any less stale in 1960, when the play premiered. And as for the story, well, it's not much. There's a perfunctory romance, a contrived dream sequence, and a truly awkward unifying metaphor about the pinball game of life. But it's an odd sensation to feel that the plot is upstaging the performers.
Tiny (Gabriel Baron) is a loser amongst losers, a little gangster with a heart of gold and a brain of mush. His buddies play practical jokes on him, and when the gang stages an elaborate heist, he is forced into the most pathetic and emasculating role. As the play begins, Tiny's friends are cooking up a scheme to convince him that he has married Angela (Emily Chisholm), a prostitute. But the cruel plans are wrenched when the sad couple gets on smashingly. Then Tiny, a disabled veteran—he took a bullet in the coccyx—goes off to claim his pension from a government bureaucracy, where he discovers that he's been registered as a Labrador retriever instead of as a person. Physical comedy, which is better than the plot it's been foisted on, ensues.
The script is strange—it whizzes past inspired scenes and lingers far too long on subjects that would have bewildered me in even the tightest production. There's nothing inherently funny about a man in a dog cage, or a bereaved dog owner still hung up on his deceased pet—even if this production wrings a decent number of laughs out of the situations. Then there's that pinball metaphor, about which it's probably more accurate to use the adjective "stretched" than "extended." At first it seems that Tiny is the ball, and he's being slammed around with impunity. Great. But if Tiny's "head is gone into permanent tilt," maybe he's the machine? And who's playing, anyway, if it's not archangels? And what good does this analogy do anyone? Apparently pinball was a symbol of American cultural imperialism in '60s Italy. That makes matters even more confusing.
Matthew Kwatinetz's direction is occasionally charming. The big crowd sequences, including the heist and the wedding, are a delight—there's always something hilarious going on in a part of the stage you hadn't thought to look. And I loved the way the décor becomes subtly impoverished when Tiny wakes up from his dream. But when the play demands consistency rather than detail, Kwatinetz struggles to keep things looking right. In one scene, Tiny boards a train and swipes a pair of trousers from a senator (Basil Harris) as he tries to evade the conductor (Karen Gruber), who's checking passengers for tickets. The scene should be a showcase for these three highly skilled actors, but they can't seem to agree what kind of train they're on. Baron's is a really bumpy ride; Harris's sways mildly; and Gruber only remembers she's on a train about a fifth of the time. The pants swapping is still funny, but it's annoying that the staging wasn't ironed out.
The ensemble is unusually strong, and Harris is especially funny as a bad guy who looks frighteningly like a nice guy. As the central characters, Baron and Chisholm are endearing, and they're both great in individual scenes. Together, however, Chisholm's wild limbs look unfocussed next to Baron's disciplined clowning. The script's slapdash approach to the couple doesn't help, and their relationship isn't remotely credible until the end, when Tiny's labored apostrophe to the angels of heaven puts things into perspective. (That forced pinball analogy butts in again to wrap things up, explaining the title of the play but failing to justify it.) Perhaps the bizarre language forced the actors to compensate by selling their puppy love with even more enthusiasm. Somehow, they rescue the play just in time. Who knew you could extract a poignant ending from a silly metaphor layered on a ridiculous, nonsense plot? ■
