Fringe: The Chairs, The Annihilation Point and more
The Chairs. It's tragic. It's hilarious. It's political. It's psychological. It's absurd.
People laughed. People cried. Mostly we just sat wide-eyed and amazed.
Ionesco's classic one-act, "The Chairs," is an extremely difficult work, and Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, under Tina Brock's brilliant direction, nails it.
The bizarre plot involves an old couple (Bob Schmidt and the breathtakingly brave Tina Brock) living in a lighthouse. Somehow Lisi Stoessel's set design transformed Society Hill Playhouse's Red Room into a white, circular space with two big windows and nine doors. The Old Man has a message for the world and has invited everyone to come to hear it. Many, many guests arrive, invisible to us, but with whom the Old Man and Old Woman talk and flirt and reminisce and explain.
Much of the action of the play involves real chairs being brought in for the guests to sit on. Many, many, many chairs.
The costumes (by Brian Strachan and Rufus Cottman) are as hilarious and tragic as everything else. Like every tiny element in this production, the Old Woman's bridal veil becomes a focus of fascination, speaking much meaning.
As Ionesco eloquently told us, "A work of art is the expression of an incommunicable reality that one tries to communicate - and which sometimes can be communicated. That is its paradox and its truth."
$20. 7:30 p.m. tomorrow through Saturday and Sept. 15 and 16 at Society Hill Playhouse, 5-7 S. Eighth St. - Toby Zinman
The Annihilation Point. The end is coming with a bang, on 12/12/12 (at 12:12:12, if you need precision), and the reason I know this is Astronaut Z. He told us all in the basement of a building on 12th Street near Vine.
He was utterly serious, saying we were the chosen candidates to save the human race. We, in turn, laughed through the whole thing.
The third time's the charm for Time Mender Productions, which is presenting this clever, polished spoof on the end of the world, or at least humanity. Actually, the first and second times were charms, too - two years ago, when the group staged a funny, rough-around-the-edges Fringe telling of The Jersey Devil in a Northern Liberties church social room, and last year, when a sophisticated production exploring The Giant Squid unfolded weirdly inside a Drexel classroom.
Before the current Fringe even began, The Annihilation Point - "Put the kids to bed . . . forever!!" its slogan commands - was heating the box office; two performances are now added to the original nine. Extensions are rare at the Live Arts/Fringe, where schedules are tight and venues, too. But there is no problem with the staging area for The Annihilation Point - it is in what is called the Art Underground, the raw-walled lower floor of a building in a once-industrial enclave.
The production is high-class Fringey, directed and infused with cybersound by Pig Iron Theatre Company's Dan Rothenberg. It plays out in front of Lisi Stoessel's and Jack Higgins' hulking assemblage of wires and gadgetry called "Mrs. Computer" (the voice of Geneviève Perrier), plus an impressive time machine with smoke and flashing lights, and a large scrim for videos that are really live.
It could not be funnier - I smiled and laughed throughout, even toward the very end, when our annihilation becomes a belabored question before the show picks up in a last-ditch effort to save us all.
The idea evolved from Annihilation's three actors: the full-throated, playful, and commanding Bradley K. Wren (Astronaut Z), who booms the news that humanity is doomed; the expressive physical actor Justin Jain, as an aide from another species; and a meticulously modulated Dave Johnson as a cyborg-in-arms.
Playwright Tim Sawicki, who also lights the show, molded the zaniness into a cohesive script, with such scenes as a look at a typical day in the post-annihilation future, a spirited demonstration of the nanobots that replace cells, and commentary from an impudent baby computer.
And those are just a few. Annihilation has never been such a pleasure. I, for one, was blown away. - Howard Shapiro
$10. 10 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Sept. 17 and 18; 11:59 p.m. Saturday and Sept. 18 and 19, and 8 p.m. Sept. 16 and 19, at the Art Underground at the Wolf Building, 340 N. 12th St.
Nuda Veritas.
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