Theater Review Revue

Absurd Reality Theatre at Theatre Off Jackson

Through Jan 21.

A searing little satire by British writer Peter Morris,
Guardians fictionalizes the lives of an infamous American (army
grunt Lynndie England) and an infamous Englishman (whoever tricked the
Daily Mirror into running falsified photos of a British Abu
Ghraib) to score points against the American military, the British
press, and the audience’s complicity in the abuses of both. Its
politics amount to
facile finger-wagging, but the play saves
itself with vivid,
eloquent language.

The “American Girl” in a prison jumpsuit (Gabrielle Schutz) and the
foppish “English Boy” in a three-piece suit (Adam Standley) trade
monologues about identical subjects from radically different
perspectives. She is a brutish, naive hick and he is a brutish, jaded
journalist—but they’re both entranced by the Iraq war, raw power,
rough sex, and pornography. Which is how they both end up stirring
controversy over their photographs of torture and sexual humiliation of
Iraqi prisoners. Except English Boy’s are a sensational fraud and
American Girl’s are tragically real.

Morris has written two broad caricatures (the rural idiot and the
vain, condescending peacock), but his lines are bright and shiny,
attractive rhetorical lures. The Girl drawls about Iraqi architecture
looking like “a petrified forest of girlie birthday cakes,” and the
Boy, in a different kind of drawl, talks about “the epistemology of
smut”—and then apologizes for being too fancy. Actors Schutz and
Standley wisely keep calm and let Morris’s language do the work.
Standley is especially adroit as the Boy. We hate him, he knows it, and
he just doesn’t care.
BRENDAN KILEY

Balagan Theatre
Through Jan 31.

In Peter Weiss’s 1963 play, the inmates at a French insane asylum
reenact the murder of the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. This
madhouse staging is directed by the Marquis de Sade, the French writer
famous for his philosophical explorations of sadomasochism, most of
which he composed while incarcerated at various prisons and asylums
(what he considered research was often construed as sexual assault).
One of these facilities was Charenton, historically renowned for
pioneering treatments in art therapy.

Weiss’s theatrical reenactment of the original, historical
reenactment is written in declamatory Brechtian prose punctuated by
scrappy Brechtian musical numbers, performed by a dozen and a half
actors. When it premiered, Weiss’s play-within-a-play was an
in-your-face shocker, its Brechtian elements deployed with Artaudian
cruelty, to international acclaim. But shock rarely carries over from
era to era, and for the past couple decades, Marat/Sade has
existed primarily as the go-to piece for large groups of community,
student, or fringe actors looking for something edgier than Our
Town. Weiss’s text is the type of full-immersion performance
experience actors dream of. Each of the play’s 21 characters remains
onstage for the entire show, in all their crazy, tic-ridden glory. And
remember: These aren’t just actors playing insane-asylum inmates, these
are actors playing insane-asylum inmates playing actors. The
accumulation of extreme behavior encourages a theatrical “going there”
that can be as thrilling for the actors as it is grating for the
audience.

Attacking Marat/Sade 45 years after its premiere, Capitol
Hill’s Balagan Theatre goes balls-out in drama-school asylum mode, with
straitjacketed crazies greeting theater entrants “in character” and the
whole cast carrying out the spitting/cackling/staggering-crazy-folk
shtick through the curtain call. Once upon a time, such insistent
characterization, combative eye contact, and riotous fourth-wall
demolition must have felt transgressive, even dangerous. This past
weekend, it felt a bit like visiting a particularly intense theme
restaurant, where the waiters dress like wackos and the theme is
kuh-RAZY!

It’s not a successful production—attempting to shock 2009
theater audiences with Marat/Sade is like trying to crack up a
2009 comedy audience with “Who’s on First?”—but it’s quite a
spectacle. Balagan’s space is small and the cast is huge, and to be
submerged for two hours in their insane exertions—including
lunatic group-sings, old-timey clowning, aggressive braying, and a
staging of the legendary lashing scene so symbolic and choreographed it
played like a Masonic rite—feels a bit like witnessing some
bizarre and foreign religious ceremony where you don’t really know
what’s going on or why but you can’t deny the passion of those
involved. Only one of Balagan’s actors tempted me to regard his
character as an actual mental patient, instead of an actor trying very
hard to look like a mental patient: Samuel Hagen, whose controlled and
nuanced take on the supporting role of Duperret is the show’s tangible
highlight, seemingly emanating from another, better production. DAVID
SCHMADER

Seattle Shakespeare Company
Through Feb 1.

It’s sort of genius, actually. The Servant of Two
Masters—a 1753 comedy by Carlo Goldoni, drawn from commedia
dell’arte—has the potential to be inaccessibly old-timey. You can
recognize the funny parts and maybe chuckle. Yes, mistaken identities
are wacky. Yes, things certainly do get madcap! But, being several
centuries old, it doesn’t elicit sincere, involuntary laughter like,
say, the latest episode of 30 Rock. Because it’s about a
300-year-old Italian clown. Humor evolves, the best humor is relatable,
and our relation to 300-year-old Italian clowns is, well, 300 years
removed.

So here’s the genius part: Director Dan McCleary reframes the play
as an American vaudeville show. Truffaldino the clown is now a little
shuffly Buster Keaton dude. Brighella the innkeeper is a Mae West vamp.
There is juggling, and tumbling, and accordion, and funny walks, and
the old soft-shoe, and that broom-chin thing that circusy people are
constantly doing. (You know: Look, there’s this broom on my
chin!) It’s an update and a revival and a throwback all at
once.

The Servant of Two Masters is beyond exuberant and incredibly
fun. I haven’t felt so engaged and included in a theatrical
production—especially a comedy—in a long time. Which is
weird, because all of Truffaldino’s asides, roughly half of his jokes,
made me want to eat my own chair and end the misery (that would kill
you, right?). Listen, world: Local references are not the same as
humor. It is not enough to just say “Fife” and throw me a wink and
expect me to laugh because I am familiar with a nearby location called
Fife. Furthermore, I could go the rest of my life without hearing “I’ll
be back” or “Do you feel lucky, punk?” ever again. Humor evolves. Those
jokes are extinct. LINDY WEST