TamTam Books News Tuesday, March 30, 2004: The Empire Builders by Boris Vian LA Weekly Pick of the Week! Through April 25 A respectable family of father, mother, daughter, and their maid, flee within the confines of their home, from a strange, unknown and terrifying Noise which pursues them as they move upward from floor to floor until they reach the attic. In each room, they find the same creature awaiting them: a dark, bandage-wrapped thing who suffers in silence as the family casually beats, whips, and pummels him. This darkly comic play by one of France’s most gifted poets, playwrights, critics, and musicians, is a disturbing essay on the culture of fear. It exposes how easily a society becomes the prisoner of its own paranoia. Vian, with ruthless precision, paints a vivid and deeply relevant portrait of what happens when we allow ourselves to be ruled by the terror of an unspecified, but always imminent, threat. When we give in to this culture of fear, when we allow ourselves to be persuaded that our enemies are everywhere—hidden, faceless, nameless, and always ready to strike—to whom do we give up power and at what price? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fri - Sat. 8:00pm Sun. 5:30pm Admission $20; Students/Seniors $10 Sundays "Pay-What-You-Can" Box Office/Reservations: (310) 319-9939 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Directed by Frédérique Michel Production Design by Charles A. Duncombe ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cast: Maia Brewton Maureen Byrnes Jake Eberle Katharina Lejona Bo Roberts Cristian YoungMiller LA WEEKLY - March 25, 2004 (Pick of the Week!) by Steven Leigh Morris French scribe Boris Vian’s brutal postwar comedy instantly brings Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros to mind — the same style of absurdist, domestic farce later used by Christopher Durang, but here saturated in political allegory. Perpetually fleeing the roar of an enigmatic heartbeat, a couple and their daughter keep finding refuge upstairs in a series of ever-smaller apartments attached to the same stairwell. Like Ionesco’s villagers, they try to make the best of the growing menace, while blithely pulverizing a bandaged scapegoat figure (“danger”) who’s present in each abode. Vian was alluding to the Nazi threat; 50 years later, his politics of terror have an entirely new resonance. Under Frederique Michel’s direction, the ensemble crackles with delirious wit so that the underlying horror is felt in the marrow. City Garage, 1340½ Fourth St. (alley), Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5:30 p.m. (Sun. perfs “pay-what-you-will”); thru April 25. (310) 319-9939. See Theater Feature in two weeks. Written 03/25/2004 Tosh // 10:09 AM ______________________ Comments: Post a Comment
The Empire Builders by Boris Vian LA Weekly Pick of the Week! Through April 25 A respectable family of father, mother, daughter, and their maid, flee within the confines of their home, from a strange, unknown and terrifying Noise which pursues them as they move upward from floor to floor until they reach the attic. In each room, they find the same creature awaiting them: a dark, bandage-wrapped thing who suffers in silence as the family casually beats, whips, and pummels him. This darkly comic play by one of France’s most gifted poets, playwrights, critics, and musicians, is a disturbing essay on the culture of fear. It exposes how easily a society becomes the prisoner of its own paranoia. Vian, with ruthless precision, paints a vivid and deeply relevant portrait of what happens when we allow ourselves to be ruled by the terror of an unspecified, but always imminent, threat. When we give in to this culture of fear, when we allow ourselves to be persuaded that our enemies are everywhere—hidden, faceless, nameless, and always ready to strike—to whom do we give up power and at what price? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fri - Sat. 8:00pm Sun. 5:30pm Admission $20; Students/Seniors $10 Sundays "Pay-What-You-Can" Box Office/Reservations: (310) 319-9939 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Directed by Frédérique Michel Production Design by Charles A. Duncombe ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cast: Maia Brewton Maureen Byrnes Jake Eberle Katharina Lejona Bo Roberts Cristian YoungMiller LA WEEKLY - March 25, 2004 (Pick of the Week!) by Steven Leigh Morris French scribe Boris Vian’s brutal postwar comedy instantly brings Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros to mind — the same style of absurdist, domestic farce later used by Christopher Durang, but here saturated in political allegory. Perpetually fleeing the roar of an enigmatic heartbeat, a couple and their daughter keep finding refuge upstairs in a series of ever-smaller apartments attached to the same stairwell. Like Ionesco’s villagers, they try to make the best of the growing menace, while blithely pulverizing a bandaged scapegoat figure (“danger”) who’s present in each abode. Vian was alluding to the Nazi threat; 50 years later, his politics of terror have an entirely new resonance. Under Frederique Michel’s direction, the ensemble crackles with delirious wit so that the underlying horror is felt in the marrow. City Garage, 1340½ Fourth St. (alley), Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5:30 p.m. (Sun. perfs “pay-what-you-will”); thru April 25. (310) 319-9939. See Theater Feature in two weeks. Written 03/25/2004 Tosh // 10:09 AM
