Logo
Lovejoy Surgicenter
ISSUE #34.30 • PERFORMANCE •
[PERFORMANCE]

From a Dream to a Dream (Hand2mouth)


So a Polish theater company walks into Artists Rep...

Social bookmarking | Permalink
Email | Print | Rate It! | 0 comments
Recently in "Performance"

October 8th, 2008
Dead Funny (Third Rail Rep) | More deadly than dead, and funny as hell.0 comments

October 1st, 2008
Guys And Dolls (Portland Center Stage) | If Congress can’t bail us out, PCS will try.0 comments

September 24th, 2008
Alonzo King Lines Ballet (White Bird) | Ballet meets martial arts in White Bird’s dance-season opener.0 comments

September 17th, 2008
Guns, Flags and Coca-Cola | It’s gringos versus chilangos in Dos Pueblos.0 comments

September 10th, 2008
Blackbird (Artists Rep) | That’s not how I remember raping you!0 comments

August 20th, 2008
Project X: You Are Here | Hand2Mouth Theatre gets into data analysis.1 comment

August 13th, 2008
Mimesophobia | A little murder (and Web surfing) before he goes.0 comments

July 30th, 2008
Songs (and Strings) of Summer | Recent releases from five local classical and postclassical performers.0 comments

July 23rd, 2008
A Chorus Line (Broadway Across America Portland) | Dancers dish about life on the Line.0 comments

July 16th, 2008
21A (Arts Equity) | There isn’t much to this magic bus.4 comments


DROP-DEAD LEGS: Erin Leddy says hello to Daddy.
IMAGE: Drew Foster
BY BEN WATERHOUSE | 503-243-2122

[June 4th, 2008]

You couldn’t fault Bruno Schulz for lacking imagination. The Polish artist and writer, who only produced two collections of short stories before he was shot by a Gestapo officer in 1942, inhabited an effervescent world of magical geography and constant transformation. Like a whimsical Kafka, his was a wondrous, soft-focus reality of leggy brunettes and bug-men.

As with other surrealist authors, theatricalizing Schulz’s art is no simple matter. A number of attempts have been made—two films and a 1992 play, The Street of Crocodiles, by London’s Theatre de Complicite—all of which have resorted to abstraction to capture the writer’s imagination. A new collaboration by Hand2Mouth Theatre and Polish company Teatr Stacja Szamocin continues in the same vein.

Conceived and directed by Luba Zarembinska, an early mentor to Hand2Mouth director Jonathan Walters, From a Dream to a Dream is, as you might expect from the title, more of an impression than a direct translation of Schulz’s stories. There’s a recurring plot about a young man looking for his father in a creepy sanatorium, but it’s just a clothes-hanger for a series of weird and beautiful transformations: a tailor’s measurement-taking becomes a sexual act; a parade of lovely women in vintage lingerie becomes a funeral procession; a childish dance becomes bedlam. These moments, which showcase the ability of both companies to craft evocative scenes out of nothing at all, are rewarding enough to forgive a narrative frame that feels stilted and under-rehearsed.















icon Story continues below

advertisement
OMSI
advertisement

There’s a wildness about the project that applies to space and time as much as the sights on stage. The ominous Conductor (Karol Bykowski) calls it “the penetration from behind of time’s mechanism, the hazardous fingering of its secrets.” I suppose that’s a poetic way of saying the show doesn’t make any damn sense, and doesn’t need to. The mesmerizing flow of polyvinyl dresses, mannequin legs, Jeb Pearson’s frightening leer and Ida Bocian’s barely restrained carnality is more than enough.

SEE IT: Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 235-5284. 8 pm Thursday-Saturday, June 5-7. $12-$18.

 

Rate This Story
5 average/1 vote

 
read all 0 comments | add your comment
 

RECENT COMMENTS ON “From a Dream to a Dream (Hand2mouth)”

 
 
 





Recently in Willamette Week
October 13th 2008Unlucky Strike | The Oregon lottery is going into detox—and our state budget is along for the smoke-free ride.
October 13th 2008Jail Junkies | Who knows more about stopping property crime: Kevin Mannix or an ex-addict who stole 1,000 cars?
October 13th 2008Shipracked | Judy Shiprack wants to be your next county commissioner. Here’s what she doesn’t want you to know about a real-estate deal gone bad.
October 13th 2008Señor Smith | Low-wage Latino workers keep Sen. Gordon Smith’s family business humming. Not all of them are legal.
October 13th 2008OMFG IT'S MFNW!
October 13th 2008Sometimes a Great Lawsuit | Ken Kesey’s last prank pits his widow in a court battle with his best friend and a Playboy model.
October 13th 2008Sliced Bread, Beware | A better fire hose, a poker aid & a foldable clipboard—meet six Portland inventors whose big ideas are the best thing since, well, you know.
October 13th 2008How to Live Cheap in Portland | Throwing too much money away on food and shelter? here’s WW’s Recession Survival Guide.
October 13th 2008The Queer and the Qur’an | Ali is gay. And Muslim. Can he be both?