CRY, GODDESS, RAGE
EXITheatre at Nu Black Arts West Theatre
153 14th Ave, 779-2284.
Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, through July 1. $10.
The central idea fueling Cry, Goddess, Rage is so dead-on smart that you want to run up on stage and throw a blanket over the performers to protect them from the unremarkable choices that follow. In adapting the events of the Iliad--that's the one with Achilles, the Trojan horse, and Helen of Troy--Curtis Eastwood removes all traces of the divine. Without the gods to blame, the Trojan War and its aftermath becomes an immense, very human tragedy.
But that's about as far as the playwright's canniness carries. Eastwood's gods are prostitutes playing dress-up; his face that launched a thousand ships belongs to a slave; and his narrative is told in comfortable language that's somewhere between one of Larry Gonick's Cartoon Histories and something intended to introduce high-schoolers to difficult material. But without any of the formal choices being tied to a deeper consideration of theme, the play becomes an untethered exercise in manipulating the basic story. In the post-Joseph Campbell world, this doesn't even make for an entertaining novelty.
The show as performed is slightly better than its scary, run-the-other-way title. Director Michael Lindgren's staging provides an elegant sense of ritual in the framing sequences, and reinforces characters throughout by emphasizing physical relationships according to the dominance of the personality in charge. Steven Lee Shults makes a believably charismatic Odysseus, although his overused and undermotivated character embodies the show's wasted energy. Odysseus manipulates so much of the action on stage that he becomes a sort of substitute god, absolving the other characters of every crime except a lack of dramatic foresight and perhaps stupidity. Making victims of the gods into victims of god-like men simply isn't enough to justify a brand-new version of this classic story. TOM SPURGEON
THE FEVER
ACT Theatre
700 Union St, 292-7676.
Wed, Thurs, Sun at 7:30, Fri-Sat at 8, through July 2. $15; 25 and under, $10.
This one-act monologue, expertly drawn by veteran actor and playwright Wallace Shawn, recalls the WTO events of last winter in Seattle in a most puncturing manner, because at its center lies the irreconcilable despair and fury between the world's haves and have-nots.
The play's sole character (John Procaccino) recounts incidents he experienced during a visit to a nameless "revolutionary country," his story progressing on a journey that moves from flaccid and blithe bourgeois irresponsibility to abject horror at the world's poverty. In this production, Procaccino, to his credit, hardly seems the same weedy, repartee-filled critic who has been an entertainment reporter on KIRO TV. Working thoughtfully and extremely close to both the script and to Shawn's well-known fey, urbane persona (to do otherwise in this case would probably be impossible), he manages to employ more genteel machismo and less of a flavor of neurosis than Shawn probably did when he first performed this for tiny audiences in 1989. With insight, Procaccino has crafted a whiteguy character who by turns is revoltingly (and quite subtly) superior, maddeningly clueless, yet as benign and familiar as an uncle waving from a sailboat off Portage Bay. Procaccino's costume is Nordstrom-ironic perfection; it's as disturbing to watch the character carry on about his childhood memories as it is to see him face his downfall--which, interestingly, is induced more or less by himself.
The thrilling and political aspects of this work will always be timely and discomfiting. Slowly and by degrees, the play corners various smug and affected liberal points of view in regard to the poor and poverty, in the end completely rupturing them and allowing them no ideological space, so the character (like the audience members, who almost invariably are upper-middle class) has nowhere to legitimately exist. This is a triumph. See The Fever for its wonderful writing and for a reminder that the staggering excesses of wealth in Seattle and elsewhere are symptoms of cruelty, and stranger than fiction. STACEY LEVINE
I, BOHEMIA
Theatre Babylon at Union Garage
1418 10th Ave, 720-1942.
Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, through July 1. $12, Thursdays are pay-what-you-will.
I spent the beginning of the Gulf War at one of the East Coast's most deeply conservative universities. Although we shared with the rest of young America the basic apocalyptic unease that came with the Close-Captioned War's first 48 hours, nowhere on campus was there a shred of outrage or protest. One group bravely giving out candles was treated like lepers dispensing handfuls of scraped-off skin. Instead of marching, I spent that first Friday's lunch making up hateful mock lyrics to the updated "Give Peace a Chance."
Marcy Rodenborn sets her new play, I, Bohemia, among a better class of young people than we were--namely, four young activist theater interns. I know the Gulf War is going on because there are references to marches, blood for oil, and George Bush. I know they're involved in theater because they keep reminding me of the fact. Rodenborn fails to develop a sense of place or time beyond offhand references and scene-bridging music. Without a specific context to give meaning to the characters' actions, we have to take their word for everything--what's at stake, how they feel, why they do what they do. Rodenborn explains a story rather than tells one; the audience is trapped in overheard conversations among old friends not their own.
The actors are left to carve out space for themselves. Both Sara Forsythe as the gay predator and Normandie Ludlam as the nerdy introvert invest their parts with well-considered takes on their respective physical presences. Even better is Anna Constant, who gives the show's most seamless performance as the willfully naive rich girl. Constant's offhand justification of a life strategy that allows her character to be repeatedly victimized provides the show's sole character insight worth remembering.
Like the war that serves as its arbitrary setting, I, Bohemia suffers from an acute theatrical self-awareness that distorts its real-world impact. I'm just not that interested in Rodenborn's past--any more than you probably care about mine. TOM SPURGEON
