Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Streaming Diary: Manual Cinema and Theater in Quarantine innovate, while Irish Rep firmly commits to nostalgia

• By drediman
• August 19, 2020
• No Comments

Last week’s streamings saw two theater companies innovate, and one tightly embrace its theatrical heritage. Each of them shined.

Manual Cinema’s production of “Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks”.

NO BLUE MEMORY: THE LIFE OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS
Manual Cinema

Over the last few weeks, Manual Cinema has been celebrating its 10th anniversary via a spectacular online retrospective of its works, which last week continued with the streaming of No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). Commissioned on 2017 by the Poetry Foundation and written by Crescendo Literary (Eve L. Ewing and Nate Marshall), the beguiling hybrid piece tells the true story of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, particularly with respect to her evolution from idealistic writer to impassioned activist for the Black community. The multimedia show (directed by Sarah Fornace) utilizes the same tools that have made this Chicago collective a standout innovator in the industry – i.e., the melding of shadow puppetry, theater/mime, and original live music in pursuit of a uniquely handcrafted cinematic experience. What makes No Blue Memories stand out is its necessary incorporation of Ms. Brooks’ poetry, as well as additional dialogue (usually Manual Cinema shows are wordless). The hourlong production also breaks from strict adherence from the cinematic vernacular, at times using traditional theater techniques to tell its story. Despite the work’s undercurrents of pointed activism and political unrest, the presentation is nevertheless cool and collected, as befits its the nature of memory/hindsight perspective, as well as Ms. Brooks’ measured approach to life. This tone is manifested beautifully by Jamila and Ayanna Woods’ smooth jazz score.

Joshua William Gelb in Theater in Quarantine’s production of “The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy”.

THE 7TH VOYAGE OF EGON TICHY
Theater in Quarantine

Another boundary-pushing piece of theater was Joshua William Gelb’s Theater in Quarantine production of The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy (RECOMMENDED). Based on a 1957 science fiction story by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, the 30-minute piece tells the story of Egon, an astronaut whose foray into a series of gravitational vortexes triggers multiverses to collide, resulting in a spacecraft that’s increasingly populated with different iterations of himself. Suffice to say, pandemonium ensues. The project is one of the more ambitious – and successful – made-for-Zoom productions I’ve come across during the pandemic. Unlike some other Zoom “plays”, which treat the medium as a hindrance, Mr. Gelb has managed to turn the format into an advantage, creating an elaborate virtual playground for himself. Indeed, with just a closet at his disposal for a stage, Mr. Gelb has somehow artfully realized the footprint of an actual spaceship (the aesthetic of those classic 2D adventure games from the 1980s and 1990s that I used to play on my computer as a kid comes to mind). Admittedly, the play feels a tad one-note, which I didn’t really mind given 7th Voyage‘s short runtime. What the work lacks in profundity, it makes up for in wit and sheer ingenuity. Simply put, the show, with its freewheeling sense of adventure, is terribly fun to watch. His tongue-in-cheek, retro technical wizardry aside, Mr. Gelb comes from the discernible performance lineages of stand-up comedy, clowning, and mime. That he was able to combine these theatrical traditions with technological ingenuity with such seamless vaudevillian glee is a wonder.

Steve Ross and KT Sullivan in Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of “Love, Noël”.

Irish Repertory Theatre

For a dose of total nostalgia, you couldn’t have gone wrong with Irish Repertory Theatre’s recent pandemic “remount” (i.e., webcast) of its hit production of Love, Noël (RECOMMENDED), which was available for live streaming for one week only (last week’s mini-run marked the conclusion of Irish Rep’s online summer season). Given that the musical two-hander was a surprise sell-out when it played the Off-Broadway theater company’s Chelsea venue last summer, this return engagement gave people who couldn’t get tickets then another chance to be able to experience Barry Day’s quaint but loving tribute to the life and works of the prolific and multitalented Noël Coward. If anything, the show, which stars cabaret stalwarts KT Sullivan and Steve Ross, actually works better this time around than it did in Irish Rep’s subterranean secondary theater. Filmed at The Players – a well-appointed private home in New York City originally built for actor Edwin Booth – the piece (which is comprised simply of letters to and from Mr. Coward, as well as a number of his most enduring songs) now exudes an enhanced sense of urban sophistication. Also, the more spacious environs allow the performances to breath. At one point, Ms. Sullivan even struts down a staircase, which would definitely not have been possible in Irish Rep’s claustrophobic studio space. Mr. Ross continued to be a convincing stand-in for Mr. Coward. Ms. Sullivan had the more daunting but rewarding task of shape-shifting between the various women  in Mr. Coward’s life, which she accomplished as before with aplomb (her resuscitation of Elaine Stritch and Marlene Dietrich were particularly amusing). As a biography of Mr. Coward, Mr. Day’s intimate, straightforward soiree may not be the most revealing portrait, but in the hands of Mr. Ross and Ms. Sullivan (and director Charlotte Moore), Love, Noël certainly had charm to spare.