|
Design Credits
Rights and Policies
Staff Login
Rent
the Helen Mills Theater for performances, screenings, and readings.
|
|
The Coin of The Realm Is Language and Its Loss
by Michael Bettencourt
The Realm reviewed April 8, 2010
|
|
|  | |
| Aaron Simon Gross, Emily Olson |
| Photo Credit:Sam Hough |
| The dystopic world of Sarah Myers' The Realm, set in "a future not so far from now" and "mostly underground," features the standard elements of such dystopias: the oppression of individuality (in this case, by the overlords' ability to steal language, and thus desire, from their subjects), the diminishment of life's joys, the erasure of memory. Myers has done her George Orwell homework, especially his principles of Newspeak in 1984 and his warnings about the devaluation of words in "Politics and the English Language." However, she did not pay as much attention to writing a dramatic work, and while Down Payment Productions has framed the play with excellent theatricality, the work itself, in its warnings and postures, remains inert.
The core story of The Realm is the rebellion of young Kansas (Emily Olson) against her jailers and her attempt to save her friend James (Aaron Simon Gross) from what The Realm, in its "Realm speech," calls "dispossession:" the process by which a person's language (and thus his or her memories and desires) is literally sucked out of their bodies. For some reason certain people -- Kansas; Mr. Father, James' biological father (Timur Kocak); Laura, James' biological mother (Amy Bodnar), who has chosen to live aboveground -- have an "immunity" to dispossession and are able to retain language, memory, and desire. Of course, they must be broken, a task that falls to people like Ms. Analyst (Jessica Pohly), who offers Kansas a devil's deal: either agree to dispossess others in order to keep her own language or be dispossessed herself.
James is on his own quest to find his birth mother Laura, who had taught him words as a child and who, by living aboveground, hopes to be a living archive of the language being stolen away by The Realm. James is in a race to find Laura before he forgets everything and becomes a fully compliant forgotten-everything denizen.
 | | |
| Emily Olson |
| Photo Credit:Sam Hough |
| The design crew has done an excellent job turning The Wild Project's small stage into The Realm. Amanda Stephens has twined lengths of black 2" pipe around the walls to give the place the feel of an abandoned basement. Three moveable pieces, each a mess of twisted piping, are positioned by actors to create walls and alleyways as James and Kansas attempt to escape from The Realm, and inside these pipe-nests stand actors dressed in Nicole Moody's distressed jump-suits with hoods and face masks -- The Realm's guards literally buried in the walls keeping watch. To heighten the strangeness of the world even more, Mr. Father, Mrs. Mother (Amy Temple), and Ms. Analyst all wear clear plastic half-masks, through which can be seen their faces, but slightly blurred, as if they are facsimiles of human features and not the real thing.
Daniel Kluger and Charles Coes' sound design also underscores The Realm's joyless and extractive nature. The process by which The Realm dispossesses people's language is literally in the air: as people go to speak, their heads are twisted to one side, their mouths are forced open, a long, vacuum-like sound fills the space, and the word or words they were going to say disappear. As James' dispossession accelerates, he substitutes the words he's lost with sounds -- he will open his mouth, and instead of the word "orchestra," out pops a snippet of Beethoven's 9th. Paul Toben's lighting makes a strong contrast between subterranean murk and the occasional glimpses we get of the above-world's sunlight.
All of this, however, cannot energize the script. At times Ms. Myers achieves a kind of philosophical poetry with her language, and there is an affecting friendship between Kansas and James, especially as James, in losing more and more words, has less and less understanding of Kansas' explanations and fears, while she must struggle to save his soul. But the contest of wills between Ms. Analyst and Kansas too often sounds like dialogue in the Platonic sense, where each character serves to mouth principles and lessons, especially The Realm's core strategy for control: since language, desire, and memory are linked, if language is taken away, memory ceases, desire disappears, and people become docile. Laura's informational monologues about how The Realm came to be put the dramatic action on pause, and the play ends with an unearned wish-fulfillment as Kansas seems to single-handedly defy The Realm's power as she reaches for the door that leads to the sun and freedom.
However, The Realm's provocative ideas about oppression and power are a welcome push-back against the inanity of contemporary American political culture, and for that reason alone it's worth it to see the play: to be reminded of how much we lose when we fail to remember what we should never forget about power and its corruptions.
 Click here to view the printer-friendly version of this review
|
|
The Wild Project
|
Category: Drama
Written by: Sarah Myers
Directed by: Jessica Fisch
Produced by: Down Payment Productions
Opened: April 2, 2010
Closed: April 18, 2010
Running Time: 1 hour
Theater: The Wild Project
Address: 195 East 3rd Street
New York, NY 10009
Yahoo! Maps Directions
| |
|
Tickets: $18.00
None
|
|
|
Creative Team
Written by: Sarah Myers
Directed by: Jessica Fisch
Scenic Design by: Amanda Stephens
Lighting Design by: Paul Toben
Sound Design by: Daniel Kluger/Charles Coes
Costume Design by: Nicole V. Moody
Cast
Amy Bodnar as Laura
Aaron Simon Gross as James
Timur Kocak as Mr. Father
Emily Olson as Kansas
Jessica Pohly as Ms. Analyst
Amy Temple as Mrs. Mother
Crew
Production Stage Managers: Jack F. Lynch/Jamie Lynne Sullivan
Assistant Director: Adam Dworkin
Movement Consultant: Dax Valdes
|
|
|
|
|
|
