 STAGE REVIEW A Modern Bestiary The theater season begins with a dark comedy from a welcome new company. BY STEFFEN SILVIS Savage in Limbo Sowelu Theater at the Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 230-2090. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 17. $6-$15.
The new theater season is noteworthy for this: There's much that's actually new. Rather than the usual suspects producing the usual work, this season sees the formation of new companies with fresh ideas. For the past few years, Stark Raving Theater's New Rave Festival, an excellent proving ground for young playwrights and performers, has effectively served as the beginning of the new season. But this year's festival was slightly upstaged by the opening of Sowelu Theater, a new company that has branched off from Stark Raving. Founded by former Stark stalwarts Barry Hunt and Lorraine Bahr, Sowelu's company members--Nan Gatchel, Chris Harder, Peter Moseler, Jordy Oakland, Sean Skvarka and Kelly Tallent--are also known for their affiliation with past Stark productions. The break from Stark Raving, contrary to gossip, was amicable, and many of Sowelu's members will continue to work with Myra Donnelley and Dave Demke at Stark. (Lorraine Bahr's new play is part of Stark's new season, and she will also be directing for that company.) The schism came from a divergence in philosophy, with Hunt and Bahr wanting to establish a workshop theater in which to explore new dramatic forms and to establish a creative process and house style. As Hunt says, "It's less result-oriented and more for the sake of the exercise." The members of Sowelu share a common artistic vision from years of collaboration, and if the company's first production is any indication, Portland has just gained a very strong ensemble. For its opener, Sowelu chose John Patrick Shanley's Savage in Limbo, a dark comedy of existential crisis. Shanley's play, like David Ives' The Land of Cockaigne (see Stage Calendar) easily lends itself to either a naturalistic or stylized interpretation. Hunt and company decided to experiment with the bestial imagery of Shanley's piece, which has led to the zoomorphizing of the characters. The bartender Murk (by name and by nature) becomes a crafty simian who rules over the lost souls who enter his bar, ominously named Scales. Washed up at the bar is April White, a feline character in a liquored stupor. April suffers a cat's emotional state, in which pleasure yields to panic and scratching. She demands independence while crying for company. Into Scales comes Denise Savage, who is starved both physically and spiritually and whose voice is the petrified squeal of a pig that senses slaughter. She's all nerves, staying clear of corners, and she pines for music to soothe her. She's joined by a bovine girlfriend from grammar school, Linda Rotunda--a brunette who is prone to proneness--and by Linda's bad-dog boyfriend, Tony Aronica, a wolf in cheap clothing. Shanley's world becomes an explosive menagerie. Savage is haunted by both life's waste and the hell of hope. "Like you're in a glass box, a bee inna jar, dreamin' about flowers, smellin' your own...death." The bleary-eyed April likens life to a struggle between a corpse and an animal. But though they all fear that their lives are spent circuses, only Savage refuses to join the herd drive to oblivion (though oblivion may be all that there is). Savage chastises Murk, pointing out that the plants he is watering are dead. "They don't know that," he responds, returning to the bar to water his clientele. Murk's final last call rings down upon Savage with all the force of Eliot's "Time, Gentlemen." There are times when the energy is full-on, though one of Shanley's occasional paranoid silences, as called for in the stage directions, would add texture. There are also important lines that are forsaken for effect, but this is rare. Sean Skvarka as Murk and Chris Harder as Tony make excellent opposites. Skvarka's Murk is a limber, almost balletic, ape who quietly stage-manages the action from the margins while Harder's Tony erupts center stage, wild as a blind dog in a meat plant. The excellent Jordy Oakland turns in a superb performance as Linda, capturing her character's terror of erotic defeat and her streetwise humor perfectly. As Denise Savage, Lesia Gallimore is finally given the opportunity to prove her talent. Her Savage is a powerful portrayal of a woman who is chased like prey by both fear and aspiration. As difficult as it is to separate a lone performance from such a tight ensemble, the cage-mad stray of Nan Gatchel's April comes close to faultless. The execution of the piece is astonishing at times, both in the novel approach that yields up new meaning in the play and in the physical interpretation of it. In an attempt to uncover the primal roots of live theater, Sowelu has successfully laid down important new roots.
originally published September 16, 1998
|
