(...)

Like any intentionally unpronounceable play, Fuse Theatre Ensemble’s (…) raises flags. For the majority of theatergoers, the play’s lack of an alphanumeric title will raise a big red one. Brecht-worshipping intellectuals, on the other hand, will be waving two giant green flags like airplane marshallers, guiding the great winged (…) into Terminal X, for arrivals of uncompromising experimental theater. Thankfully, both camps are dead wrong. Directed by Rusty Tennant, (…), subtitled An experiment in repetition, opens with one man and two women (Gerrin Mitchell, Christina Markowski and Kate Mura, respectively), seated together on a couch and lit only by the screens of their cellphones. Their lines are initially nonsense. “Is that...?” one asks, murkily answered with “Do you think this is what I meant by that?” A MacBook’s telltale quack betrays the goofy music’s unfortunate GarageBand origins. When the lights come up, bare-bones conversations emerge. “What is that?” one woman asks. “What?” the other replies. “OK...” She wavers between question and answer. “OK,” the other confirms. All the conversations, clearly romantic dramas, repeat the same 20 or so lines, with small textual variations and plenty of ever-changing emotion thrown in to keep it interesting. Music and esoteric opening sequence aside, (…) has a groundedness seldom seen in such pretentiously titled works. As stated dozens of times by the characters, “I’m kind of amazed.”

Where: Theater! Theatre!
Phone: 971-238-3873
Address: 3430 SE Belmont St.
Website: www.fusepdx.org