Factory Theater’s “Kubrickian,” with Ben Auxier, Taylor Mercado Owen and Rio Soliz Ragazzone/Photo: Oomphotography
I’m usually a sucker for simple, pared-down theater that emphasizes acting over effect, as Factory Theater’s world-premiere production of Zack Peercy’s “Kubrickian,” directed by AJ Schwartz, most definitely does. Still, Josh Philoon’s set—consisting of an off-white platform bordered at the back by a textured white sheet or curtain that looks a little wrinkly and sad, with everything bathed in Emmitt Socey’s unvaried whitish lighting and sound designer Isaac Mandel’s white-noise electronic hum—pushes the surroundings beyond minimalism into an almost punishing visual and aural monotony.
Like the setting, Peercy’s script has a somewhat threadbare quality, at least at this point in its development. The play is represented as a “trippy existential show,” built around a premise that mixes science fiction, horror, absurdist and fan-fiction elements. But the play’s setup—in which three men suddenly and without explanation find themselves caught in a featureless white space and must find a way to pass time and coexist without the usual virtual distractions—is trippier in description than execution.
Chris and Danny, the show’s two speaking protagonists (there’s also Howard, who maintains a shell-shocked silence throughout), do not seem as affected by their bizarre, terrifying situation as one would expect. Their chit-chat is a combination of fanboy-level commentary on the films of Stanley Kubrick and predictable, self-pitying complaints about their pre-captive lives (jobs are dull and unfulfilling, Dad doesn’t understand me, modern life is lonely, etc.) that could come from a “Man Camp” retreat or group therapy session.
The two main characters do differ: Wannabe filmmaker Chris is verbally aggressive, smugly wielding his expertise on all things Kubrick in the face of working stiff Danny’s aesthetic indifference. (“When I watch a movie, I want to turn my brain off.”) They are alike, however, in expending surprisingly little mental energy on the key questions of where they are, how they got there and what awaits them. And unlike Vladimir and Estragon, the two going-nowhere tramps in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” who inhabit a wasted, empty world not unlike the “Kubrickian” limbo, Peercy’s characters never wax poetic or philosophical, or possess much in the way of wit. A navel-gazing earnestness weighs down much of the dialogue, and for much of its length the play suffers from a verbosity that’s 180 degrees removed from Kubrick’s own laconic style, where everything is subsumed to a fanatically detailed, subtext-rich mise-en-scène.
Factory Theater’s “Kubrickian,” with Rio Soliz Ragazzone, Ben Auxier and Taylor Mercado Owen/Photo: Oomphotography
Director Schwartz finally captures something of the Kubrick spirit at play’s end, at a point when all of the characters, not just the catatonic Howard, have mysteriously become mute and can interact only through sign language and mime. The production culminates in an improvised, fun-to-watch “2001”-inspired play-within-a-play that brings together the play’s framing storyline and the animating Stanley Kubrick motif. While the ending doesn’t tie up all the tale’s threads, it at least suggests a plot arc and message: that only by joining forces in a creative, playful way can these squabbling characters begin to liberate themselves from the forces that bind them. If I read this enigmatic play correctly, it’s a parable about the need for live theater and other embodied, collective art forms in a world increasingly dominated by deadening, isolating systems and technologies.
While the ending works well, it’s preceded by a number of trimmable scenes that aspire to a cosmic freakiness but miss the mark. There are too many longueurs here, too much dramatic dead air. In part this seems intentional, a way to convey to viewers the characters’ sense of tedium and entrapment. But on stage, the trick is to communicate boredom without being boring. At present, the production spreads no more than thirty or forty-five minutes’ worth of exposition and plot beats over about ninety minutes of stage time. It should be considerably shortened, tightened and focused—and lightened up, too, in spots.
Portraying the hardworking, self-effacing, unartistic Danny on this night was actor Emerson Ross—an understudy called in with little advance notice, who deserves kudos for pulling off a challenging, elaborately choreographed part with aplomb. Ross’ understated performance in a role usually played by Rio Soliz Ragazzone came off without hitch or hesitancy. (The cast change wasn’t announced to the audience, a puzzling and irritating lapse by Factory management.) As Chris, Taylor Mercado Owen takes up too much space in the play’s first half, as he obsesses over Kubrick and picks on Danny for not sharing his passion. Paradoxically, only when he becomes voiceless does he learn to communicate. And Ben Auxier is suitably blank in the ultimately thankless role of the cataleptic Howard, who seems more like a prop than a character.
It’s not there yet, but with some work, “Kubrickian” could be an interesting addition to the ranks of “nightmare captivity” tales, such as Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit,” Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter” or, on the comic side, the movie “Groundhog Day.” Confinement is an evergreen theatrical theme, reflecting the spatial enclosure of the stage and the repetitive, pre-scripted nature of performance. The theme is painfully compelling these days, when people are being disappeared and/or silenced on a daily basis, courtesy of an administration that openly embraces a brutal, arbitrary and irrational notion of order. “Kubrickian” isn’t a polished work of theater, but to its credit it does capture the strange, disorienting feeling of the present moment and offers us a tantalizing hint of hope.
The Factory Theater’s “Kubrickian” runs through March 28 at 1623 West Howard. Tickets are $30, available by calling (312)275-5757 or at thefactorytheater.com.
