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Sometimes it’s all about how far you want to take your metaphors. As an alternative to traditional narrative, there’s a way to build a story by looking at a central metaphor from above, below, behind; by peeling layers away and reshuffling them, then reapplying them. It gets really interesting when a metaphor falters under inspection from a certain angle, showing its flaws, or when a new vantage point crystallizes the metaphor’s worth and outstrips the story. When walking through the world of fantasy, we can suspend or apply our prejudices whimsically, allowing for new questions and ideas to arise because we’ve crossed the line into un-reality; old ideas don’t translate, sometimes. But when fantastical characters trace the conflicts, not to mention the styles, of a bygone “reality,” powerful moments may come to pass. Charcoal Boy, created by Sarah Provost, Eric Novak, and Elyas Khan, is a dark musical puppet-show with sideshow-like weirdness and a central metaphor of the bygone, the no longer useful, the dated freak. The main character is a branch with charcoal feet who finds work in a traveling show. His employer and tormentor is a jaunty feline with good taste in clothing and a weakness for drink. The cat takes Charcoal Boy on the road, forcing him to work while the latter endures a crisis of identity. A girl made from flame draws him near while dreams of his past tree-life haunt him. Charcoal Boy’s tale is an old one, of a naïve weirdo who runs from home and finds only exploitation and heartbreak. Several elements make the show tell this old tale in an alarmingly original way. First, this is a puppet show where the puppeteers (Lute Breuer, Ceili Clemens, Sam Hack, Kevin Taylor, Amanda Villalobos) are visible and in the open, a clique of blandly suited people with blank faces who operate the cat, Charcoal Boy, the flame girl, a gang of antique robots, and the brilliant set. These puppets are so mysterious, you quickly forget about their operators, obvious as they remain, and try to place them in some other time/place. Charcoal Boy reminded me of Giacometti. The cat is especially magnetic, as strangely familiar as any talking animal you’ve seen. Is this a Siamese Barnum doing the Miles strut? His hustler movements are human and feline, and so a fusion that makes this puppet so, well, believable. In all, the puppetry succeeded by focusing the audience on the puppets as if they were living actors. The suspension of belief occurred, was passed, and the story unfolded for us. (I should note that puppets have always bugged me out, the subversively scary idea that the inanimate might come to life, I shuddered at this as a kid. A phantom of that fear still shoots through me when I see puppets, but this show did something much different with that fear. Also, my mom went to the show with me and overcame a similar aversion.) Designed by Novak, the set was integral in the rotating view on the metaphor of Charcoal Boy. The puppeteers cut through sheets of paper to create new windows, tear the paper down, draw on it with Charcoal Boy’s feet. The front of the stage looks like the bottom of a drawing board. So the beginning of the show in trees and the use of charcoal is everywhere. That kind of manifestation of theme into the physical set is an admirable accomplishment. ******* If Trenchtown lay on the Bay of Bengal, was frequented by shipmates of Rimbaud and Conrad trafficking in amplifiers and amphetamines, Nervous Cabaret would serve as the house band in the last bar in the weirdest gin alley. The band’s sound crashes from violent to fragile in staggered stride, rips the heart out of the room only to offer it to the wallflower. Yet as bloodily moving as their live performances often become, who could have expected the way they move Charcoal Boy? Singer-guitarist and CB co-writer Khan provides all the puppet’s voices (with the exception of the ethereal Gwen Snyder as Flame Girl) while firing the sound effects and keeping the pace of the show moving. Percussionist Brian Geltner does so many things so well that you scan the side stage for a hidden drummer; you find only this mad propeller at the center of the only band that sounds like this. By turns Ellington, Led Zeppelin, and vaudeville orchestra, Nervous Cabaret unfolds the landscape of Charcoal Boy, howls until you feel the wind in the trees, and carves a cry into the voices of the puppets. This is what is meant by a tour de force. With so many strong elements, Charcoal Boy is able to probe its central concern with innocence lost, with the importance of the odd and disposable, with the dangers of home and the road, from a myriad of angles. As the best and final song of the piece begs, “Everything matters.” "The
Adventures of Charcoal Boy" Copyright © 2006 by theater2k.com. All rights reserved. |
