Author: Joe

How many people’s lives have been terribly impacted by the large and small disruptions caused by the global pandemic?  Neil Redfield, the writer and star of Pim’s Metamorphoses, is one of them.  He has returned to his childhood home.  He is thinking.  “Something about being in this room again.”

Originally written as a solo piece while attending Southern Methodist University in 2019, Mr. Redfield has adapted his work into a live digital performance.  Similar to Ovid’s seminal Metamorphoses, this is a poem.  It may not be an epic per se, but it is wildly ambitious in scope.  The work is clearly personal.  Setting the show in his actual childhood bedroom in the middle of a pandemic with the world closing in and abundant time to overthink anything and everything is truly inspired timing.

What was this young boy really afraid of as a child?  Why did he fear the sun failing to rise each and every morning?  Those are the questions posed at the beginning of this work.  Was the sun breaking its promise?  The viewer is soon to find out in a series of sections both fantastical and mundane.  He begins his journey falling out of a window.  The video angles were cleverly executed.

Mr. Redfield and his Director, Ann Noling, remotely conceived this production.  This performance lasts approximately ninety minutes.  One person and one long poem in a room.  Along with Scenographer Matthew Deinhart, the creative team nicely developed movement and varied locations which were effective in setting mood and changing scenes.  There’s even a little puppetry.  While the technical elements are often simple in design, they are nicely executed and well rehearsed.  The lighting effect utilized for a scene with the sun reminded me of sci-fi series from the 1950’s or 60’s.

The writing here, however, is the true star of the piece.  The poem directly speaks to the angst of a child who “really, really, really wanted to meet his  father, his real father.”  He imagines him “with an overpowering presence that no one could deny.”  It’s no small leap that he turns out to be one of the gods.  That’s how the fictional Pim connects to Ovid’s poem.  This section of the play and performance is a particular highlight.  Headphones are recommended when watching as the sound effects (Caroline Eng) enhance the storytelling.

Character transitions are always thoughtful and occasionally outstanding.  (I’ll not reveal too much here.)  A simple switch to the Scholar finds Mr. Redfield seating next to a shelf with books.  Perithemus is “a bit prickly, he had friends, who also saw the world as predictable phenomena.”  A child grows and finds his tribe.  Many are successful.  Perithemus’ storyline has his world turned upside down.  How significantly?  “He felt electricity over his skin.”

An example of the gorgeous prose:  “And Perithemus felt a firework flower swell inside his entire body and turn it into tingling lights, for the first time, he was higher than the clouds and he could see everything at once, every person who has ever kissed every other person in all of time, just for a moment – before falling slowly, blissfully back into the gravity of the supermassive object his lips has just tasted.”

Is Mr. Redfield’s performance as blissful as that kiss?  That’s a big ask.  I did enjoy and admire certain segments and characterizations more than others.  As an entire concept, however, there is beauty in the language and in the analysis of one’s place in the world and in the journey to get there.  The influence your parents had – and have – on your very existence and the way you perceive the world, for better or for worse.

Pim’s Metamorphoses captures this particular moment in time by creating a theatrical, whimsical and profound link to our socially distanced and isolated lives.  Now is as good a time as any to try this:  “He woke up as something else.”

Pim’s Metamorphoses is being performed live digitally though January 31, 2021.

www.pimsmetamorphoses.com

The alarm goes off.  You scan your horoscope.  “Hey, look at that, it says that you should keep to yourself today and limit contact with the outside world.”  Doesn’t that line seem so appropriate for our pandemic filled 2020?  While A Day was written a few years ago, Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s play has been given its English language premiere in an inventive live streamed performance.

The four main characters spend their time navigating a day in their life.  “Your horoscope tells you to be bold today.  Be bold.”  Starting at midnight, this play is structured as an hour by hour exploration of four people with different personalities.  The interesting conceit is that much of the time they narrate and comment on each other’s story.

Alphonso (Jahmar Ortiz) is the cheerful, optimistic, physically fit one.  Debs (Erica Steinhagen) tells us that he made a smoothie.  He makes a little extra for his neighbor.  Nico (Sylvie Yntema), however, sees the neighbor “with the problematic jokes” as one who “doesn’t seem like the type who finds delight in blended fruit.”  Translated by Josephine George, there are witty gems like that scattered throughout this play.

Alphonso is also a movie buff who particularly enjoys classic films.  As movies are referenced, the footnotes display on the screen.  There are a few good jokes which come from these as well.  The best parts of A Day are found in the details.  Alphonso narrates Harris’ constipation issues.  Sitting on the toilet, he plays twenty seven rounds of solitaire, winning eleven.  Alphonso then concludes, “but what would actually fill you with relief would be to relieve yourself.”

Harris (Karl Gregory) tells the spunky, obsessive Nico that she sometimes feels “like an extra in your own life.”  He elaborates further.  “Especially at work, you feel like the poor extra in the samurai movie who accidentally got kicked in the face when one of the main samurais mounted his horse.”  There’s plenty of sadness lurking amidst the quirkiness of these lives in all sorts of array and disarray.

Directed by Samuel Buggeln and Wendy Dann, this live streamed production reminded me of the opening credits for the television sitcom, The Brady Bunch.  Each person in their own box looking at the others in their boxes.  Except here they talk about the other people and also about themselves.  The four actors perform from separate green screen spaces on the stage of the State Theater in Ithaca.  The effect fit the play beautifully and was nicely realized.

Parts of A Day are a bit heavy handed.  I assume that is an intentional reflection on everyday life; our fears, our worries and our insecurities.  In certain sections, my mind wandered as the character’s tales looped around many mood changes.  The details, however, never failed to disappoint.  And there’s even a helpful cure provided for us all.  “When the boat starts to sink, we’ll take a ramen break.”

A Day will be live streamed through November 21, 2020.  Advance ticket purchases are available.

www.thecherry.org

TheaterWorks Hartford (Connecticut) and TheatreSquared (Fayetteville, Arkansas) present Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy with additional support from The Civilians (New York City).  This play was written and produced for a digital platform and performed remotely.  When the credits roll at the end, the cast list includes “volunteer tweeters.”  At this moment in the presidential election cycle, how could you not be interested?

The play opens with a bit of fantastical foreshadowing.  A wizard manages to grow trolls out of the ground.  No one notices they are magical.  The tsar summons his troll army.  He tells them that a neighboring country is choosing a new king.  The trolls need to ensure that “they choose a fool.”

Sara Gancher has written this comedy which is reflective of a major news item from the last five years.  Russians interfered with the 2016 presidential election.  Ms. Gancher takes us into the world of the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg.  Right from the beginning, we know what this company thinks.  “Americans are idiots.”

Depending on each employee, the outlook of their job is different.  The bombastic Steve (Ian Lassiter), a disgruntled American, seems to believe they are saving the world.  Nikolai (Greg Keller) thinks what they are doing is evil, “but I want to do a good job anyway.”  Nerdy Egor (Haskell King, deadpan hilarious) previously worked in loss prevention at a WalMart in Nebraska.  He cranks out a lot of volume but is chastised for too much Nazi content in his messaging.

The situations are indeed funny.  Should you read the manual so you understand Americans?  No, since you are “better off watching House of Cards or Ru Paul’s Drag Race.”  Is this a job or is it a war?  The characters debate whether they are mongrels in the golden horde or artists who are supplying mankind’s eternal need for stories.

Ms. Gancher makes sure that her tale contains some prickly zingers which make us reflect and consider the mission.  No one growing up in the U.S.S.R. ever thought their country would end.  But it did.  “Never doubt a group of people can change the world,”  she writes.  Additionally, “Hillary kills babies in dungeon tunnels under Disney World.”

Killary Clinton jokes aside, there is a core sadness which I felt while watching this play.  People actually believe this crap.  My parents consume this horseshit by the shovelful.  Russian Troll Farm is inherently a comedy draped in an invisible cloak of horror.  The abandonment of critical thinking is one of America’s greatest failures.  No one said it more clearly than Donald Trump when he uttered, “I love the uneducated.”

Office politics and sexual misadventures also play a part in the plot.  There are tensions with the boss Ljuba, a tough, old, alley cat of a woman.  When one of her employees wants to leave, she warns, “If you don’t come back to work you might want to leave the country.”  Then she adds, “nothing personal.”  The fourth part of the play focuses on Ljuba and it is one of the highlights of a creatively structured and diversely written piece.  As Ljuba, Mia Katigbak is simply excellent.

The entire cast shines in their various characterizations.  The multi-location digital collaboration has been capably and confidently directed by Jared Mezzocchi and Elizabeth Williamson.  These actors are fully engaged with each other and not simply facing out to the streaming audience.  There are many visual details to enjoy.

Is anyone a hero or even likable?  That is not the point in a play which asks the question, “What’s the difference between Moses and Stalin?”  In the midst of another presidential campaign, our intelligence agencies are again warning about foreign government’s meddling with our democracy.  Russian Troll Farm could not be timelier.  It’s billed as a comedy – and there are indeed laughs – but they often cut more deeply.  That makes this play worth seeking out.  That also makes the voting ballot worth casting during these next few weeks.

Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy is streaming live through October 24, 2020.  After that, the play will have encore viewing on demand through November 2nd.

www.russiantrollfarm.com