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What is hope? Is hope a blind faith in the future’s safe arrival? Is it the necessary delusion that the next will arrive as an improvement over the previous? Do we have a choice -- to hope or not to hope? Is the (“subconscious”) choice we make to live, to struggle onward, to wake and breathe, is this not all an exercise in hope? As primal as the will to survival seems, on some level we-- humans-- make a choice. Of course, the fuel to the fire can be total bullshit. Arrived at numbly, resultant of alienation’s most absurd, nihilistic products (“money, cash, ‘hoes’”), this choice is perhaps never “made” in any cerebral or spiritual sense. Though individual-specific, with a labyrinth of causes, it is made easier when done with others. And easiest of all is the choice made by another, through the edict of a greater being, someone to believe in, not just someday. And when the present environment is at its most hellish, the specter embodied can grow into the most ridiculous and grotesque forms. Now, it sounds like I’m talking about life, but all of the above can apply to that mutation/foil/progeny/loin of life: the theater. That’s why we go to the room and sit and watch. Because as royally fucked-up or innocuous as many plays are, as often as you walk out thinking, “why the hell do I put myself through this shit?” you see a show like the National Theater of the USA’s ABSN:RJAB and think, “because this kicks ass.” A twisted, bloody, compact spectacle, this show restores just enough hope in the stage to keep at least one theatergoer (and his +1 buddy) believing in the future of performance. For real: pray that they put this on again. People throw around the term “black comedy” quite a bit, but NTUSA does the work to fuse and transcend the two words. Led by James Stanley’s Victorian blowhard-emcee, the company draws the audience into the faltering myth of Abacus Black (Mark Doskow,), a (I think) 15th century monk who proclaims himself the chosen one. Abacus’s promise to his followers: a city of gold, perhaps located in the New World. The idiot prophet is short on details but vision alone is sufficient fodder for the desperate disciples who beg him for coordinates. Stanley, Jesse Hawley, Jonathan Jacobs, and Normandy Sherwood (along with other company directors, developers: Yehuda Duenyas, Ryan Bronz, and brilliant lighting and sound by Ben Kato and Jody Elff, respectively) retrace Black’s evolution through hysterics, song, and puppetry, and never, ever waste a breath or word or movement. A great strength to the language involved comes in the mumbled doubts and glossed-over gaps in the prophecy. Grandiose proclamations like “I am the chosen one” precede qualifications like “or something like that,” “or whatever,” or “Mom and Dad.” This has a dual effect: on one hand, really, really funny, on the other, very pointed: hope, no matter how localized to one tenet, is always a pasted together, flaw-riddled phenomenon. The latter effect is amplified by the sideshow-like set transformations and the ramshackle opening and closing of the red curtain, the fevered entrances and exits of the actors. Everything appears to be candlelit and red and black and as ghoulish as Jacobs’ brilliant shrieks. Best of all: the power of these actors is such that when they warn us of the world outside, when terror manifests in each of them, we understand why a fraud like Abacus Black might seem like a savior. We feel the pull of any charismatic promise as a rescue from the perils waiting for us in a world of brain-eaters and zombies. We consider: a cult this horrified and fanatical must have good reasons. Blind hope is a reaction to the wretched condition and lack of “progress” in our present surroundings. Hearing over and over again that a city of gold lies out there, somewhere, is enough to live on in a world of treachery and howling. In many different ways, we’re asking all the time, “Which way is that city?” And speaking strictly of theater, we know that we won’t see actors like this “out there.” I’m comfortable admitting that I’ve left out a lot of the details, large and small, which make ABSN:RJAB a rampant success (“what about the gold?!”). I’m not sure a review can match this show in terms of thoroughness. Two bits of minutiae stick with me. First, Abacus Black speaks in a whisper so small that we strain to hear him, hang on the sound of his rasping, and literally crane our necks towards the stage. There is the search for hope in a nuts(hell). Second, a master symbol marks Abacus’s first and last appearance. He comes into sight at the outset by the light of a match he vainly strikes, and then lights, then watches go out. At the end of the play, he holds an electric light in his hand, sterile, sustainable, and dull. Again, so much of what I just tried to say, condensed and then switched off. Take that, theater! Take that, world! "ABSN:RJAB
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