ADRIFT: A Medieval Wayward Folly
“It’s getting late. I best go prepare your leeches.” Lines like these inform the loosely linked skits of ADRIFT: A Medieval Wayward Folly. Fans of both the Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthy Delights and Monty Python antics will find much to amuse themselves in this diverting entertainment.
The show begins with a focus on a small section of Bosch’s phantasmagorical painting. The Ship of Fools is denoted by a simple flag. The wayward souls are adrift at sea. Body movements suggest wind and waves. A song portends “this is the way the world ends”. The mysteries and general cluelessness of the time period are gently skewered. The illiterate ask “oh great diviner what do we do now?”
Our guides on this journey are hapless medieval peasants working hard to survive day-to-day but also put on a show. The audience could be seen as the locals being visited by these traveling tellers of tall tales. Music, dance, puppetry, simple sets and costumes combine to create a stylistic homage to the “Dark Ages”. Feathery touches of humor inform the tone.
A cast member greets the arrivals upon entering the theater. A request is made. Write down a question for the oracle. I did and so did many others. They result in a very fun sideshow incorporated into the tomfoolery. One person hilariously asked “what is a printer doing when it is doing private maintenance?” Nothing in this piece is too serious nor is there a linear storyline.
Adrift is defined as floating without being either moored or steered. That is a fair summation of the work created by the Happenstance Theater ensemble. Low budget meets creatively clever in this series of vignettes meant to evoke SNL circa 1224. The audience is enjoined to revel in its life’s wayward follies.
Amazements directed to the uneducated masses of the day are on the menu here. There will be a magic show and a real demon. The troupe will obsess on death and the afterlife. Medical quackery of the day will also take a seat so we can giggle at old school lobotomy techniques.
Does the show have a purpose? There is a light reference to climate change as reflected by the floating ship surrounded by water, its fools and a focus on end days. The real fun here is to sit back, transform yourself into a medieval peasant and let this very silly and goofily imaginative low budget conceptual thousand year old pageant infiltrate your soul like the plague. Leeches, like botox, are optional.
The run of ADRIFT: A Medieval Wayward Folly has ended in New York. The show will be performed at the Baltimore Theatre Project from February 22 though March 3, 2024.