Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
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by Anne Washburn, directed by Simon Bloom & Mitchell Cushman
Outside the March Productions with Starvox Entertainment and Crow’s Theatre, Aztec Theatre, Toronto
May 13-June 7, 2015
“Burnout”
The animated TV show The Simpsons becomes the basis of mythology in the future. It sounds like it could be a hoot. Sadly, it isn’t. American playwright Anne Washburn takes an idea that could be a great comedy sketch or at most a 90-minute play and stretches it out to nearly three hours with increasing diminishing returns. Washburn most fully realizes her idea in the first act of Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play from 2012. The second and third acts do not explore the topic further in any significant way and turn an exciting evening into an exhausting one.
Potential theatre-goers should know that the play is not a showcase for impersonations of Simpsons characters like Rick Miller’s MacHomer (1995). It is play that lies between drama and comedy, with perhaps more an inclination to drama. The play is set somewhere in the the northeastern United States after the massive destruction of the country’s electric power grid following the meltdown of all of its nuclear power plants. The meltdowns themselves followed by radiation poisoning have killed off most of the population leaving individuals to wander alone in search of others. Act 1 begins with a small group of survivors who are entertaining themselves by recalling the “Cape Feare” episode (aired in 1993) of The Simpsons.
The episode is a parody of Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of the 1962 J. Lee Thompson film of the same name. Mixed up in the group’s retelling of the story is the fact that Robert Mitchum, star of the 1962 version, also starred in the Charles Laughton’s 1955 film The Night of the Hunter, where his character had the words “love” tattooed on the fingers of one hand and “hate” on the other. Along with this is the reference the Simpsons’ episode makes to songs in two Gilbert and Sullivan operettas – “Three Little Maids” from The Mikado (1885) and “I am the Captain of the Pinafore” from H.M.S. Pinafore (1878).
Matt (Colin Coyle) is the main teller of the tale and the most enthusiastic. Jenny (Tracy Michailidis) helps him out and Maria (Katherine Cullen)is most intent of clarifying plot points. Sam (Sébastien Heins) does not take part as he is the group’s guard and neither does the quiet, fearful Colleen (Amy Keating), who stays a distance from the group and flinches at any mention of violence. The story is interrupted by the arrival of Gibson (Damien Atkins), who is first perceived as a thereat and then found to be a useful source of information not only about what is happening in the rest of the US but about The Simpsons. He says he never watched the show but knows all about it from an ex-girlfriend who was obsessed with it.
Act 2 takes place seven years after Act 1. The group of Act 1 has now formed a touring theatre company that stages episodes from The Simpsons along with recreations of broadcast commercials from the past. Washburn loses the thread of her play here because instead of developing the premise that today’s pop culture could become tomorrow’s mythology, she focusses on how batteries have become the new currency, how people expect to be paid for remembering lines from shows of the past and how the hardy company manages to stage television-derived stories without the use of electricity. The highlight of this act is a well-choreographed mashup of hit songs from the 1970s to the 2010s, cobbled together apparently because no one can remember more than a few lines from any one song.
This last aspect drives her the most off-course and turns the second act into mostly a satire of low-budget theatre and clichéd actor-director and director-crew disputes. Washburn is completely uninterested in character development, so she gives us no clue how the fearful Colleen of Act 1 has become the bossy director of Act 2. The act ends with a surprise attack on the troupe. Washburn never makes clear who is attacking or why.
Act 3 takes place 75 years after Act 2. None of the characters of the first two acts are present. The entire act portrays a musical ritual in which a modified version of “Cape Feare” is presented as if it were a combination of ancient tragedy, medieval mystery play and present-day kiddie show. The key changes to the original “Cape Feare” are that the entire set-up to the finale has been dropped and Mr. Burns, the the evil owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant where Bart’s father Homer works, is now the villain rather than the former clown Sideshow Bob.
Washburn attempts to demonstrate how the story has been corrupted in the telling showing that remarks that characters made during Act 1 have now become canonical parts of the ritual even if put to different uses. The discussion of Robert Mitchum’s hands in The Night of the Hunter now assumes major thematic importance concerning the fight between love and hate and Bart’s battle with Mr. Burns uses light sabres, an idea stolen, of course, from Star Wars. Washburn makes her point about the pop culture becoming myth in about 15 minutes. The Act 3 pageant goes on for far too long and seems to end several times before it finally does.
Washburn’s idea that pop culture could become the basis for a mythology of the future may seem exciting but is inherently flawed. First, it is a peculiarly American view of the world since the US, until recently, was both the biggest producer and consumer of pop culture. Her notion that it is only pop culture, rather than religion or education, that unites people anymore was already out of date in 2012. Only when there were only three television channels in the US and people actually had to go to movie theatres to see movies could one count on people having the same basic knowledge of fictional stories sold as entertainment. With the rise of the internet, cable television and film and music downloading, pop culture can hardly be considered a unifying force.
Second, Washburn’s final pageant play devolves into a simple conflict between good and evil, with the force of good motivated by revenge. George Lucas’s Star Wars that Washburn references is itself a sci-fi version of the universal tropes of myth that Joseph Campbell examined in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Campbell’s compendium of the essence of all pre-literate – and one might note pre-electric – myths is far more complex than anything Washburn gives us. Most notably Washburn neglects the entire idea of sacrifice or of the hero’s descent into the underworld to benefit society that Lucas uses so clearly in Star Wars, Episodes 4-6. Given how short a time human beings have had electricity, why should the development of myth in a post-electric world be any different from its development in a pre-electric world?
While Washburn clearly thinks her play is much cleverer than it is, the production helmed by Simon Bloom and Mitchell Cushman is extraordinarily inventive. The two have taken on the challenge of presenting the play in the same conditions that the characters experience – i.e. without electricity. The venue is the the abandoned Aztec Theatre at 1035 Gerrard Street East. When I first read about this experiment I assumed they would somehow use torches and candles as people had for thousands of years and as the Sam Wanamaker Theatre uses for its productions of 17th-century plays in London. I was, therefore, disappointed to find that their conception of the post-electric world, like that of Washburn, heavily involves batteries, which are, as lighting designer Nick Blais admits in his note, a form of electricity.
Bloom and Cushman, at least, power the show with Bullfrog Power generators that provide pollution-free electricity. Blais also makes much use of calcium carbide lanterns, crank-up work lights and bicycle-powered lighting. In this realm, Blais’s ingenuity outstrips Washburn’s.
While the post-electric staging may receive all of the attention, Bloom and Cushman have done much more to make the experience as immersive as possible. They have had Stephanie Michelle Leon completely cover the walls of the theatre lobby with missing persons notices that reflect the concerns of the characters in Act 1. Ken Mackenzie’s set design reflects the kind of set and backdrops that amateurs would be able to construct on their own from limited resources that include the use of shadows, mirrors and live sound effects artist James Smith. The most elaborate production elements are the gigantic puppets designed by Marcus Jamin to represent the fateful hands of Mr. Burns and later Mr. Burns himself.
Mr. Burns is a play about a single idea, not characters, so it’s not surprising that the play provides little for actors to dig into in that way. The closest to a complex character she creates is that of Gibson and Damien Atkins brings him fully to life showing us his fear, whimsy, wit, boredom and finally panic that he has radiation poisoning. The clear highlight of Act 1 is its finale where Atkins performs “Three Little Maids” all by himself miming amateur G&S society movements and singing the orchestra accompaniment when needed.
Among the uniformly strong cast, Colin Coyle is very engaging in Act 1 for his giddy enthusiasm in retelling the Simpsons episode and then in Act 2 in playing the thick-skulled Homer, whom police have given a new identity. Katherine Cullen is riveting in her one long monologue in Act 1 telling the story of a man who realizes too late that he can’t save himself from radiation poisoning. Rielle Braid is notable as a diva-like actor in Act 2 and as the singing Bart Simpson in Act 3.
It is a pity that whoever dramaturged Washburn’s play at Woolly Mammoth in Washington, DC, where it had its premiere, did not advise the playwright that less is more, especially since Washburn’s stores of imagination seem to have exhausted themselves in the first act. The idea of a post-apocalyptic (and post-electric) society developing its own religion is, of course, not new. You only need to think William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) to realize how superficial Washburn’s play is. In drama, for a greater, more succinct and more chilling examination of how a story can develop into ritual, look at any of Irish playwright’s Enda Walsh’s plays, with The Walworth Farce (2006) as perhaps the best example, where an Irish family in England constantly re-enacts their fatal last days in Ireland. What is best about Outside the March’s production of Mr. Burns is the experience itself and that you can gather without having to stay for the entire play.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: Colin Doyle, Amy Keating, Rielle Braid and Katherine Cullen. ©2015 David Leyes.
For tickets, visit www.outsidethemarch.ca.
2015-05-14
Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play