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Something that's always troubled me about science is the whole chicken-egg dilemma when considering questions of experimentation and result: how does the effect of experimentation factor into the conclusions? In other words, if we decide to implant microchips in the brains of birds, how can we consider the subsequent data a sample of "nature"? Just because the bird sings a certain way with it's head split open, should we then conclude she sings this way at rest on a branch in the wild? By creating a control environment, what do we lose in our understanding of the real, in the woods environment? With brilliant direction, a dependable cast, and a coherent relationship between set/style and text, SaBooge Theatre's Fathom, part of SoHo Think Tank's Ice Factory 05, re-stoked my struggle with the above conflict. The success of Fathom's direction, a collective effort by the SaBooge ensemble, has me wrestling with evolution again, like suddenly I'm from Kansas. Though there's certainly an obtuse quality to this tale, a play that leaves one with questions worth rejoinder receives no small welcome here. The last 400 years include uncountable instances when the British Empire controlled a hostile territory with depraved results in the name of social progress. Somewhere in that period sits the prison isle that provides the setting for Fathom. Industry of some sort is at hand, recently spawning the sad story of Sara Findley. A convicted thief, lately a factory worker, Sara (Adrienne Kapstein) is on the path to reform under the guidance of two odd progressives. She works as a servant while caring for her son, Fabian (Patrick Costello), who we quickly learn can barely breathe. Their overseers/saviors are a phrenologist, Dr. Winston Cowley (Andrew Shaver), and a dowdy, ignoble noblewoman of ideals, Lady Jane Franklin (Kayla Fell). As these two, alternately patronizing and bizarre, give harebrained lectures, both to the populace and to Sara, we watch the stern-then-tender care given to Fabian by his mother. Alive at rock bottom, the two scratch along, this hard life better than the poorhouse black lung. The desolate routine is broken by the arrival of Alastair Wainsborough (Attila Clemann), an assistant to a soon-to-arrive scientist from the Royal Academy of Science. A bit too much of the booklearnin' to him, Alastair bounces onto the rocky shores in search of conch. His healthy presence challenges the babbling authority of Dr. Cowley and his curiosity leads to deadly revelation. Employing Fabian as a diver, Alastair has his Darwin moment: the boy can breathe underwater. Things go to hell from there, as the struggle for the mutant ensues. Dr. Cowley, a learned believer in the prophecy of a skull's shape, will not suffer an eclipse, while Sara battles/clings to a son suddenly aware of his special purpose and the world beyond the horizon. And with missionary's zeal, Alastair declares all of it secondary to science and the right of the scientist to pluck the plant and take it back to the lab for analysis. Beginning with a good amount of shadows, the ensemble pushes the story into darker depths, creating an undertow of madness that sucks away the tenuous order of island life and pulls it out to sea. The disruption of a provincial backwater by an overzealous student is no original plotline, and often comes in handy as the structure for a critique on theory and attempts to apply social science to the muddy countryside. Fathom isn't such a critique. It is cloudy and unsure about quick answers and it shits evenly on dictum and hokum alike. ******* Trying to smother the heralds of a new science, Dr. Cowley considers himself a man of learning and discovery. But his is no bloodless interest, and jealousy, that most human of traits, drives him to violence. As he begins to cut open Fabian's chest to get to the bottom of things, we witness scientific inquiry's sociopath side: sometimes someone must die to solve the riddles and lay another stone in the foundation. Equally ravenous, Wainsborough crows of the fame to come in London, kidnaps the child, and strings him up like a good specimen. Again, Wainsborough represents all the good intentions and all the steamroller quality in the name of "science." He believes that Fabian transformed to survive in a foreign environment, a snapshot of evolution in progress. (It's never clear if Wainsborough comes before, after, or is a stand-in for Darwin, and Fathom is never too heavy on the details, thankfully) For that, the boy must come to London and face the probes. In both these scientists-gone-wild, we see the questions in the critique Fathom makes: what isn't distorted by the magnifying glass? What isn't destroyed when pinned to the slide? And what factors in the environment lead to Fabian's adaptation/evolution? At one point we believe the brutality of life on earth forced Sara to attempt desperate action, leaving her son blessedly deformed. This possibility might be a blow to evolution or a testament. Is Sara part of "nature," a natural cause affecting her son's evolution? Or is she a woman living in a harsh class system who acts to protect her young? Is evolution progress if driven by weakness, not strength? Just as these questions dawn, the final moments suggest a more natural cause, not a violent rupture, but the smooth transition of heredity. There may be roots predating harsh surroundings. The doubt cast allows us to wonder. A summing of the rest of the play, the final scene unleashes all the paradoxes, blind alleys, assumptions, and sagging branches onto which we venture when we humans study humanity's place in nature. ******* Operating a clever set and driven on by two live multi-instrumentalists, the cast is relatively direct in approach, with dark comedic tendencies. Shaver as Cowley remains feverish throughout, and Fell as Lady Franklin bumbles and babbles along, taking pit stops to enforce her severe rule over Sara. Together they make a suitably twisted opposition to Clemann's Wainsborough, wholesome enough at the outset and convincingly hysteric by the end. The three don't provide any big surprises, but rather a backdrop for the intensity of Sara and Fabian and their shared secrets. Kapstein gives an essential guilt and survivor's resolve to Sara that is important in understanding her complicated motherly instinct. She has seen and done enough to remain quietly in fear. Costello's labored breathing and nearly autistic movement convey Fabian as a suffering fish pulled on-deck. Physically wasting, he takes on a mythical quality through his struggle, tortured or exhausted except when in water. The pain evidenced makes the mutation believable and sympathetic. Costello turns a withered mutant into an almost tragic superhero. As stated, the approximate date of Fathom is unclear, but the play lives between myth and science. Perhaps there's a weirdness in evolution, its basis in transformation and mistake, the protean nature of nature. Fathom lets all of this come into view, throwing us in the water and letting us thrash about with all these questions. "Fathom" Copyright © 2005 by theater2k.com. All rights reserved. |
