Oh
Lost Weekend
Imago Theater 17
SE 8th Ave., 231-3959.
7:30 pm Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays and Saturdays.
$12-$15. Closes Feb. 26.
Imago's latest production is a circus of one woman's dreams
and fantasies.
As with most of the theater's original work, Carol Triffle's
Oh Lost Weekend starts with a crepe-thin tale that
explodes into spectacle. Perhaps the best comparison would
be with the traditional buffoon car, the smallest of vehicles
that can easily spill out a thousand clowns.
A woman named Vickie Browne (Triffle) of Goshen, New York,
is accused of treason for impersonating Queen Victoria of
England. We are told that Vickie was found dazed and wandering.
Tagged as mad, she's shipped off to a so-called "hat factory,"
where she becomes the center of attention for a demented
pair, Judge Hugh and Doctor Black. Frocked in black robes,
these Cruikshankian professionals bedevil the poor woman
with the aid of orderlies.
Through to the end, the mystery of Vickie remains shrouded,
as it should. Is Vickie Browne really Queen Victoria? Perhaps
Queen Victoria should be on trial for impersonating Vickie
Browne of Goshen, New York.
The set is a 19-foot-high metal cage engineered by Demetri
Pavlatos, a hive of voices and motion. It soon becomes clear
that we are inside Vickie's mind and that, yes, it's a fairly
confused place. What follows is an absurdist festival of
song, dance and jest that reveals Triffle as a whole-cloth
clown.
As the creator and lead performer, Triffle anchors this
piece in the traditions of the European cirque; here
Vickie is head clown. Some elements fail or carry on too
long, especially a song Triffle sings about some erotic
stirrings in Vickie. But there are some brilliant moments
of stagecraft, particularly when Vickie descends into her
cell while standing on a swinging bed. Below her stand the
abnormally tall Doctor Black and a nurse clutching a hypodermic
syringe. Doctor Black barks over a bullhorn while the nurse,
in one deft jump, leaps onto the still-swinging bed to tranquilize
Vickie.
Perhaps the finest moment comes when Triffle forays into
the audience to find someone to join her in playing with
an imaginary rubber ball, which she pitches and catches
in a brown paper bag. Triffle does not consider herself
an actor, yet her evocation of the sad-eyed naiveté
of a lonely child is staggering. From the audience, she
returns to the teeming cage, placing the brown paper bag
on her head. She scales the cage to a catwalk above, where
she overhears a heated debate over whether she is truly
the Queen of England. She opens a trap door in the catwalk
to hear better, but her paper crown topples and lands at
the feet of her detractors below. Triffle then lowers herself
through the trapdoor, falling, Alice-like, through her taffeta
dress, which remains above on the catwalk. Below, surrounded,
clad only in an institutional shift, she defiantly retrieves
her simple crown and places it back on her head where it
belongs. I can think of no finer moment of expert clowning
in the last three and a half years of theater.
Oh Lost Weekend will probably be best remembered
by some for the finale, in which Triffle turns an ordeal
by water into an underwater ballet. Lowered into a 300-gallon
glass-sided water tank in a mad attempt by Judge Hugh to
ascertain Vickie's innocence, Triffle neither sinks nor
floats, leaving the question of her identity open. Perhaps
in the name of decorum, the hovering Judge begins to drop
Vickie's clothes and shoes into the tank to allow her to
dress. Triffle performs a subaquatic dance as she dresses,
creating images of fluid, dreamlike beauty.
Joining Triffle on this subconscious ramble is her co-artistic
director, Jerry Mouawad, who takes on the role of Doctor
Black. Black and Judge Hugh spell each other as ringmasters,
though it's Mouawad's Black who invites us to join the action
on a metaphysical level. Jonathan Godsey brings a snarling
derangement to Judge Hugh, the more literal of the two.
As the orderlies and nurses, Ryan Custer and Robin Rosenberg
make limber climbers upon the cage. The piece also includes
Laura Lou Pape-McCarthy, who was excellent in Blood Wedding,
Blood Wedding, and Quinn Casey, who was last seen in
Triffle's Ginger's Green and is a young performer
to watch. Jeff Forbes lights and Katie Griesar's compositions
are, as always, expert.
The weekend is worth losing at Imago.
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Willamette Week | originally
published February 2,
2000
|
