Theatre Night with Dr. Dave--Phineas Hamm and Messenger #4

The 27 Would-be Lives of Phineas Hamm and Messenger No. 4 (or…How to Survive a Greek Tragedy)

Paper Moon Repertory/Cambiare Productions

February 18, 2012

The BLUE Theatre

East Austin

Runs February 16 to March 4, 2012

These full-length plays were presented as a double feature (although one could choose to buy a ticket for a single play only), and this arrangement gave Dr. Dave a huge theatre night.  Fortunately, the productions were spectacular and well-matched and left their audiences energized and satisfied.  Unfortunately, these shows will soon be competing head-to-head for numerous awards in the upcoming award nominating and granting season—Dr. Dave predicts.

“The 27 Would-Be Lives of Phineas Hamm” is a full-production premiere of an original play by its director, Rachel Maginnis.  The set, costumes and props have a nineteenth century European feel to them, inspecific as to place.  Speaking accents were not used or attempted by the cast.  The title character inherits a device from his inventor father, that, when used, kills him and reincarnates him in a new life.  The ensuing scenes are snapshots of the journey through this soul-vortex or karmic suicide express, a literary device amplified in the 70s by the science fiction writer Phillip Jose Farmer in his Riverworld series.  In this take on it, we see a lot of life, murder, sex, drinking, fighting, whoring, fortune-telling, fortune-gaining, fortune-losing, gambling and more fighting.  We don’t see a lot of answers to fundamental questions about time and the soul, yet the characters ask questions about it anyway; and Phineas never gains control over the mysterious device (don’t touch it, Jim!).  We do see a lot of scene changing by the cast, and they were very good at it.  Standouts in their multiple roles were Aaron Alexander, Andrea Smith and Omid Ghorashi.  The props by David Meissner were brilliant, the costumes by Rachel Maginnis (yes, her again) were sex-ee and the set by Ia Enstera was like some monumental carved European clock—one didn’t know what would pop out of it when the clock struck Never.

   

Messenger #4 hails from the Classically obsessed imagination of Will Hollis Snider of Cambiare Productions.  A literary agency has proprietary technology, which allows it to send the Messengers into every Classical and Elizabethan play—to manage their common literary devices of messengers coming on stage telling the characters and audiences what has just happened off stage.  That way a playwright doesn’t actually have to stage the sea-battle of Actium or anything else enormous that wouldn’t fit onto the stage.  Hilarity ensues.  Messages to different plays get switched; technology goes haywire; and characters fall in love.  Yes, this is farce comedy.

 The action and scenes shifted on the activation of wrist devices that hurled the messengers backward and forward in literary time.  Actors rushed on and off stage to change the set.  Often their set pieces were tree branches, and they enacted trees for the new scene, duly credited in the program.  These rapid-fire transitions afforded many of the cleverest moments of the play.  Consequently, almost all of the actors played several roles, the most being eleven, enacted by the hard-working Jessica Allen.  Andrew Rogers played only the title character, but even he met himself in a time paradox goof-up in the middle of the play.  His lover was seriously confused.  Tap your wrist devices to dislodge static buildup. 

Rachel Weise was a major standout.  Her Puck was a scream, and as Shakespeare she delivered the timeless soliloquy on actors spending a brief hour upon the stage, but the play living on forever (I forget its play source).  This was the heart of this loving tribute in farce comedy to Classical and Elizabethan drama.  Then Shakespeare went on to bring the laughs in a godlike swordfight with his own characters (What?  How dare you kill off my character!  En garde!)  Another excellent performer was Megan Minto, who brought a slightly drier and cooler humor to the play, thus becoming a relieving tropical isle in this ocean of farce. 

Regarding both plays, contemporary theatre has abandoned the proscenium stage with its structured ability to both hide and reveal its theatre magic.  Consequently, there has been a revival of the chorus.  This is post-post-Classical and post-post-Modern.  The New Chorus is tasked heavily with scene changing, as there is no curtain behind which to do this.  And black-clad stagehands are passé and thoroughly lame.  The New Chorus performs all this—and singing and dancing, too!  Both productions took slightly varying approaches to this problem set, but both succeeded brilliantly.  The issue inevitably involves transitions, which must be clear but brief.  The results reflect on direction.  The work here was facilitated by Ia Enstera’s articulating set, designed for both productions and their needs.  The choreographers, Kaitlyn Moise (Phineas) and Rachel Wiese (Messenger) also provided clever solutions throughout.