Through Oct 16.
Much Ado About Nothing Taproot Theatre
Through Oct 23.
Axolotl Dance Underground
Though Oct 3.
In the First show of the season at Empty Space, heads are constantly popping off. They are knocked off, bitten off, severed, and stitched or jammed back on. The noggin of the eponymous little hero, Frankenocchio, finds itself lodged on an impressive array of bodies, including those previously belonging to a pink poodle, God, and an adorably Casper-like seal. The nominal literary sources for the script--Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the story of Pinocchio-- provide a loose sketch of one character, the father/creator figure Benevecchio. But the decapitation-happy plot bears a much closer resemblance to the kind of sadistic games 10-year-old boys play with their sisters' Barbies.
I'll grant that it was smart of the creators to set the action in a circus, thereby evoking the visual appeal and horror of a carnival sideshow, because the attraction of a modern puppet show is much the same. We enjoy watching bodies that are like and yet grossly unlike us; we take a narcissistic pleasure in the way the puppets' tiny articulated limbs so closely mimic our own. The spectacle of puppet decapitation is ghastly and comical because we both can and can't imagine that sort of violence ever happening to us.
Similarly, Frankenocchio's elaborate visual tableaux recall all sorts of optical amusements from the era before moving pictures--the black-light illumination of underwater anemones and the rippling surface of the sea were particularly nice. But absent a robust story, these moments of visual pleasure are mere diversions, and they can't support the weight of two full acts.
At Taproot Theatre, a mostly serviceable production of Much Ado About Nothing is hobbled by a goofy set. The first floor of Leonato's residence sports a deep foyer and is proportioned for people, but then, without a hint of stylization, the second floor flattens forward and squashes down so that the point of the roof just grazes the ceiling.
Director Scott Nolte's choice to transpose the play to post-World War II Long Island seems a bit lazy. Italian-American family origins explain away the Continental names-- this aspect is harmless, I suppose, excepting an obtrusive Italian accent. More damning, the move overexplains the character of Beatrice, fitting her exceptional wit into a commonplace notion of Rosie-the-Riveter postwar independence. Candace Vance has to bear some of the blame for her character's dull sheen; she handles the language competently enough, but her Beatrice just isn't too keen on flirting (or on pretending she abhors the practice).
In contrast, Timothy Hornor's Benedick is fabulous. He generates sexual tension seemingly single-handedly (an impressive feat), and his bug-eyed bluster tumbles toward dewy romance with an endearing ease. The show is worth seeing for his performance alone--forget the cramped set and tolerate those boring transpositions of time and place. Hornor has Shakespearian comedy down.
This Sunday is the last chance to catch Axolotl, an interactive dance work by Karl Frost. Axolotl isn't so much performed as facilitated. Participants first read a list of guidelines, and then performers blindfold and lead them into a room for a two-hour "performance experience," where they interact with objects, performers, and each other in deliberately unspecified ways. If this description would intimidate most people, it terrified me. I'm not particularly touchy-feely. I didn't relish the idea of being blindfolded and having to rely on strangers and my own senses of touch and hearing to assuage boredom. The list of guidelines didn't reassure me. "You don't have to do anything. You have permission to do nothing. Activity, passivity, and receptivity are all choices you can make," one rule read, explicitly depriving me of the comfort of opting out intellectually.
But the performance surprised me. There's certainly a physical aspect, and some participants spent their time doing contact improvisation or holding hands with strangers. (I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone tried to commission a private, Ecstasy-enhanced Axolotl performance.) I was more affected--disconcerted, even--by the experience of having someone else know more about what I was doing or saying than I did myself. Answers I gave to questions were reincorporated into events later on; performers noticed what I was doing (hoarding stuffed animals, for example--don't ask) and encouraged my pursuits. It was infantilizing and weird and extremely interesting. I highly recommend it.
