Theater: Enda Walsh's disorienting, apocalyptic Arlington
Either due to my fascination with the genre, or to the curious proliferation of such works, it seems that I have experienced many artistic views of the apocalypse lately. All this in a time of relative peace and abundance (yes, I remember global warming, but that is an imminent issue and concern, not an imminent danger as faced by residents of Aleppo). The best of such works create a disturbing future (sort of an inverse of the idealism of Star Trek) that make us reflect on our own times. Most mix in some form of dystopia as well: mankind has not only done himself in, but reverts to brutality and tyranny in or after doing so (think Lord of the Flies). The best of these works add some glimmer of warmth and positive humanity to temper the despair, e.g. the wonderful father-son relationship in Cormac McCarthy's The Road or the teen ambisexual bonding in Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur. Arlington, a new play by Irish playwright Enda Walsh, also goes in this direction, but with an overlay of ambiguity and misdirection akin to his countryman Samuel Beckett.
Arlington has only two live speaking roles--two young people trapped in towers designed to imprison, torture, and record personal stories from the captives prior to their leaping to their deaths out high windows. The populace seems to be divided into those being tortured and those enlisted to torture, and the groups can switch roles, especially if the torturers show remorse or compassion to the tortured, as happens to The Young Man in this play. The play is in three acts, which play in 90 minutes without intermission. In the first act the young woman Isla (beautifully played by Charlie Murphy) is gently and ineptly interrogated by a new technician (The Young Man). When she tells a story it is recorded, and the interrogator devises projected video and musical interpretations of the story, perhaps to prompt a more interesting, personal version of the tale. However, excess emotion or political content is vetoed. What is more vague is whether the spare room (with a creepy fish tank and white walls) and technology itself can interpret the story; at times in the play the room writhes, projects other pictures, perhaps of dead past storytellers, and exhibits an independent personality. At the end of the act Isla, awaiting her number to be projected to go on the next (deadly?) phase, sees instead another number go up. In act two, a wordless modern acrobatic dance (photo), we see the death throes of the unlucky woman whose number was projected. The 20 minutes of choreography, often without music, is eerie and disturbing.
In the final act, we see the interrogation of The Young Man, now tortured and bloody, by the voice of Big Brother (actually Big Sister). He has apparently helped Isla escape into the dreamy forest of one of her stories. Did she really escape, or just die prematurely out of the tower protocol? Either way, he is held responsible. There is a confusing section in which he forced to don a variety of men's and women's clothes, the point of which eluded me. The play ends with gentle romanticism, the two hand in hand in the forest--but is this a delusion, fantasy, or real? Vagueness and confusion is achieved by clipped dialogue, attenuated thoughts, and a bit of stream of consciousness (in the grand Irish tradition).
I think I would have enjoyed the opacity of the play more if the visions of death and tyranny were more vivid. The central dance sequence was by far the most violent and disturbing element of the play, but the dialogue did not quite rise to that level. A variety of pop, rock, and modernist music is used effectively throughout the play. There were effectively dramatic lighting effects and projections used to communicate the mysterious scripted special effects, especially in the final act when The Young Man is mystically transported from his interrogation to the gentle forest:
A sudden surge of sound and light - significantly stronger than before.
A single light on the YOUNG MAN as he falls to the ground and covers his head.
A deep pounding guttural noise fills the auditorium as the images of the YOUNG WOMAN dancing begin to distort.
The room's trying to fix itself but failing.
Past images are projected erratically -- they chew themselves up and catch fire.
The ceiling tiles are being peeled back -- above them a bigger space.
After one minute the noise and images implode.
Silence for some moments.
The YOUNG MAN looks up -- and as he does the light on him opens wider.
A completely new atmosphere -- the new light.
He is somewhere else.
All this leaves what is actually happening open to interpretation, which is great and adds to the overall feeling of uncertainty that envelops the play. Overall, I was struck by the mixed media and dance integration used by the playwright, who attempted to achieve with motion, music, and lighting what words alone cannot do. This pushing beyond a fixed traditional medium has a long tradition in art, from the seventeenth century Florentine Camerata adding singing to Greek plays (the origin of opera), to Beethoven radically adding voices to his Ninth Symphony, to contemporary video and mixed media art displayed in traditional art museums. For me, however, the overall emotional impact of Arlington fell short of the best apocalyptic artistic visions.
Arlington has only two live speaking roles--two young people trapped in towers designed to imprison, torture, and record personal stories from the captives prior to their leaping to their deaths out high windows. The populace seems to be divided into those being tortured and those enlisted to torture, and the groups can switch roles, especially if the torturers show remorse or compassion to the tortured, as happens to The Young Man in this play. The play is in three acts, which play in 90 minutes without intermission. In the first act the young woman Isla (beautifully played by Charlie Murphy) is gently and ineptly interrogated by a new technician (The Young Man). When she tells a story it is recorded, and the interrogator devises projected video and musical interpretations of the story, perhaps to prompt a more interesting, personal version of the tale. However, excess emotion or political content is vetoed. What is more vague is whether the spare room (with a creepy fish tank and white walls) and technology itself can interpret the story; at times in the play the room writhes, projects other pictures, perhaps of dead past storytellers, and exhibits an independent personality. At the end of the act Isla, awaiting her number to be projected to go on the next (deadly?) phase, sees instead another number go up. In act two, a wordless modern acrobatic dance (photo), we see the death throes of the unlucky woman whose number was projected. The 20 minutes of choreography, often without music, is eerie and disturbing.In the final act, we see the interrogation of The Young Man, now tortured and bloody, by the voice of Big Brother (actually Big Sister). He has apparently helped Isla escape into the dreamy forest of one of her stories. Did she really escape, or just die prematurely out of the tower protocol? Either way, he is held responsible. There is a confusing section in which he forced to don a variety of men's and women's clothes, the point of which eluded me. The play ends with gentle romanticism, the two hand in hand in the forest--but is this a delusion, fantasy, or real? Vagueness and confusion is achieved by clipped dialogue, attenuated thoughts, and a bit of stream of consciousness (in the grand Irish tradition).
I think I would have enjoyed the opacity of the play more if the visions of death and tyranny were more vivid. The central dance sequence was by far the most violent and disturbing element of the play, but the dialogue did not quite rise to that level. A variety of pop, rock, and modernist music is used effectively throughout the play. There were effectively dramatic lighting effects and projections used to communicate the mysterious scripted special effects, especially in the final act when The Young Man is mystically transported from his interrogation to the gentle forest:
A sudden surge of sound and light - significantly stronger than before.
A single light on the YOUNG MAN as he falls to the ground and covers his head.
A deep pounding guttural noise fills the auditorium as the images of the YOUNG WOMAN dancing begin to distort.
The room's trying to fix itself but failing.
Past images are projected erratically -- they chew themselves up and catch fire.
The ceiling tiles are being peeled back -- above them a bigger space.
After one minute the noise and images implode.
Silence for some moments.
The YOUNG MAN looks up -- and as he does the light on him opens wider.
A completely new atmosphere -- the new light.
He is somewhere else.
All this leaves what is actually happening open to interpretation, which is great and adds to the overall feeling of uncertainty that envelops the play. Overall, I was struck by the mixed media and dance integration used by the playwright, who attempted to achieve with motion, music, and lighting what words alone cannot do. This pushing beyond a fixed traditional medium has a long tradition in art, from the seventeenth century Florentine Camerata adding singing to Greek plays (the origin of opera), to Beethoven radically adding voices to his Ninth Symphony, to contemporary video and mixed media art displayed in traditional art museums. For me, however, the overall emotional impact of Arlington fell short of the best apocalyptic artistic visions.
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