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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.
Cast: It's always gratifying, especially with such an arch and stylized piece as this, when the entire cast is in the same show as each other. This is a beautifully uniform ensemble, convincingly surprised by the things that keep going wrong (but are in fact all scripted), and all working together to tell their stories. Particularly effective are Annie Hägg, who brings heartbreaking vulnerability to her monologue about her daughter, and Shelby Flannery, the center of each piece, who exceeds at balancing the intense losses her characters cannot speak of, with an ironically defiant and brittle facade.
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.
Cast: It's always gratifying, especially with such an arch and stylized piece as this, when the entire cast is in the same show as each other. This is a beautifully uniform ensemble, convincingly surprised by the things that keep going wrong (but are in fact all scripted), and all working together to tell their stories. Particularly effective are Annie Hägg, who brings heartbreaking vulnerability to her monologue about her daughter, and Shelby Flannery, the center of each piece, who exceeds at balancing the intense losses her characters cannot speak of, with an ironically defiant and brittle facade.
Design: Emona Stoykova's production design--a wall of slabs of board and cardboard, piles of detritus, all of which is ultimately raw material for the actors to build their space--is initally very exciting. When the first Host (Jeremy) snaps creases into a sheet of cardboard to drape over a white suitcase and declares it a chair, there is an anticipatory chuckle flowing through the audience: here there be playfulness. Not all of that promise, that promise of making a space out of nothing, pays off in full: when they build the train car for "Canary," it is a pre-constructed round wooden seesaw, stable enough to support three actors, and topped with wooden chairs. However, the imagination and dilation of experience still continues through the voice and physicality of the performance: the canary cage is filled with bright yellow feathers that shed continuously; in "Desire" the two men are costumed by Luna Gombert in oversized pants and coats to adapt to their stilts, dwarfing Abby in her simple white shift as she runs through and around them, trying to avoid being knocked down again. The playfulness exhibits in other times throughout--from the giant lights of the incoming train (lighting design Krista Smith) to the model trains to the roll of fabric showing the passing views through the train windows in "Canary." This is a theater where play means play.
***
Running: Now playing at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club (KRYMOV LAB NYC) - Opening: September 28th & September 30th, 2023. Closing: October 11th & October 15th, 2023.
Category: play with music
Length: 1 hour, 40 minutes, no intermission (each).
Creative Team
Adapted, Written, and Directed by: Dmitry Krymov
Designers: Shari Perkins (Dramaturgy, Onegin Translator), Baye & Asa (Movevment Consultants), Rachel McMullin (Swing Choreographer), Emona Stoykova (Production), Luna Gombert (Costume and Puppet), Krista Smith (Lighting), Kate Marvin (Sound), Leah Ogawa (Puppet), Yana Biryukova (Projections), Jacob Russell (Production Stage Manager), Katie Rosin/Kampfire PR (Publicity), Tatyana Khaikin (Interpreter), Steven Brower/Brower Propulsion Lab (Train Guy), Anna Labykina (Technical Director).
Cast: Natalie Battistone, Tim Eliot, Shelby Flannery, Annie Hägg, Kwesiu Jones, Jeremy Radin, Erich Rausch, Jackson Scott, Elizabeth Stahlmann, Anya Zicer.
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| Foreground: Tim Eliot, Annie Hägg, Jeremy Radin, and Shelby Flannery. Background: Kwesiu Jones, and Erich Rausch. Photo by Steven Pisano. |
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