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| Shelby Flannery and Tim Eliot. Photo by Steven Pisano. |
Seen on: Tuesday, 9/26/23.
Plot and Background
La MaMa presents KRYMOV LAB NYC's dual exploration in Big Trip, which combines an adaptation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Three Love Stories Near the Railroad.Three Love Stories adapts two Hemingway short stories ("Hills Like White Elephants" and "Canary for One") and a section of O'Neill's play Desire Under the Elms, presenting each vignette as a movement in a symphony (the audience is instructed not to clap between each). In "White Elephants" a couple struggles to talk around what they can't talk about and wonders if there is any love left. In "Canary" a woman tells two strangers about her estrangement from her daughter and the canary she is bringing home to try to bridge the gap. In "Desire" a woman must straddle the temperaments of her new husband and his grown son. Each is an examination of different kinds of love, and how that love can warp and change under duress.
[Note: I was originally scheduled to also see the other half of Big Trip, Pushkin "Eugene Onegin" in our own words on Friday, September 29th. This performance was postponed due to the flooding in New York, and I am unable to make the postponed performance. I had hoped to talk about the two pieces in conversation, but instead will have to make do with discussing on Three Love Stories]
Play: I often struggle with how to engage with theatrical work whose goal seems hostile to audience engagement. From the repeated discouragement of us clapping, to cast members literally kicking heavy props toward the front row, it's clear that Krymov Lab NYC does not want its audience to sit back and relax. And with threads of Brechtian style further alienating the audience from an emotional engagement, it does seem a curious choice that Three Love Stories chooses to explore three pieces that rely heavily on the unspoken anguish of each character's inner struggle below the surface. That being said, I was never bored, and the performances inspired me to track down the two Hemingway stories to see what the source material was like (I have an extreme aversion to O'Neill, so I left that script alone). The dilation of these concise and understated short stories into expansive and physical moments (a dancer in "White Elephants" seems to represent both the unborn fetus and the woman's suppressed libido; the collapse of the facade of the woman with the canary, as her makeup smears and her wig falls off) are quite stunningly effective theater, even if I don't always understand what it all adds up to. Maybe I don't need to understand.
What I Knew Beforehand
Pretty much nothing. My favorite!Thoughts:
Play: I often struggle with how to engage with theatrical work whose goal seems hostile to audience engagement. From the repeated discouragement of us clapping, to cast members literally kicking heavy props toward the front row, it's clear that Krymov Lab NYC does not want its audience to sit back and relax. And with threads of Brechtian style further alienating the audience from an emotional engagement, it does seem a curious choice that Three Love Stories chooses to explore three pieces that rely heavily on the unspoken anguish of each character's inner struggle below the surface. That being said, I was never bored, and the performances inspired me to track down the two Hemingway stories to see what the source material was like (I have an extreme aversion to O'Neill, so I left that script alone). The dilation of these concise and understated short stories into expansive and physical moments (a dancer in "White Elephants" seems to represent both the unborn fetus and the woman's suppressed libido; the collapse of the facade of the woman with the canary, as her makeup smears and her wig falls off) are quite stunningly effective theater, even if I don't always understand what it all adds up to. Maybe I don't need to understand.
