THE THEATER MIRROR, New England's LIVE Theater Guide
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MARQUEE | USHER | SEATS |
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note: entire contents copyright 2002 by Larry Stark
Costumes by Bonnie Duncan
Sets & Props by Nathan Pyritz
Lights & Stage Management by Kathy Maloney
Puppeteers Bonnie Duncan & Dasia Posner
Tori Low
as
Adria Grey
Sean Barney
as
Lewis Chatham
Kristin Baker
as
One of Adria's Neighbors, Lewis's Assistant, The Slow-Witted Librarian, The Woman with the Ugly Hat, The Woman on the Bench
Christopher Cook
as
One of Adria's Neighbors, A Person on his Way to Work, Jim the Library Janitor, The Nosy Man Reading a Newspaper, The Deputy Mayor, A Twin, The Man in The Rain
Sean Kilbridge
as
One of Adria's Neighbors, Adria's Boss at the Library, The Courier, The Surveyor, A Twin, The Man on The Bench
Anyone who is a fan (as I am) of the Rough & Tumble Theatre knows that their minimal style works not because they leave out all inessentials, but because of their intense concentration on the details they retain. When Tori Low's Adria Grey peers into the darkness her wary shoulders and peripatetic eyeballs fill the empty gloom she stares into with vague but lurking possibilities. And with every new show there are elements familiar, and surprising new ones. Tin their "delightfully dark fable" called "Adria" they trade their nonsense-syllables for words, but in exchange they deal with unexplained, intangible forces, menaces, and delights.
One of their new things this time is slightly surreal shadow-puppetry by Luna Theatre that shows dawns and sunsets in an unusual metropolis where buildings dance, traffic swims, and tiny figures walk through opening and shutting doors. Another new effect is two black-covered flats, hinged together into a corner, that can wipe a scene away or wipe another into being as cleanly as a cut in a film.
In their by now famous "Blah-blablah" nonsense stories, R&T was at careful pains to make clear, by gesture and mime, what the missing words must mean. But in "Adria" all is atmosphere. Adria Grey works in a library, but unexplained figures seem to be stalking her. When she dozes at her desk a book mysteriously appears at her elbow, and later a courier delivers an envelope inside which is a slip of paper with nothing but a page-number written on it. The page (in the book of course) has a recipe, and the cake she bakes with it somehow transforms her self-centered co-workers into smiling, gregarious friends ready to share the coffee and smell the flowers. Curious.....
But there seems to be a charlatan loose in this unusual metropolis: Sean Barney's pleasantly persuasive Lewis Chatham who charms his way into the Acting-Mayor's chair just by suggestion, whose Assistant (Kristin Baker) looks vaguely like a Russian spy, and who would rather Adria'd stop spreading sweetness and light with her radiant smiles.
"Adria" is full of little things, little victories, vague threats, slow sunrises, and glowing faces freed of fears. Nothing you can put a finger on. But then, delightfully dark fables are like that, aren't they?
Love,
===Anon.