Go Crazy with The Gogol Project
Call it crazy or just plain silly, but most of all call it absurdly fun. The Rogue Artists Ensemble brings to life Russian writer’s Nikolai Gogol (often referred to as the father of modern Russian realism), three best-known works with a hyper-theatrical use of puppetry, music and dance.
In the fantastic and odd world of Gogol’s short stories, “The Nose,” “The Overcoat” and “The Diary of a Madman,”: noses grow legs, dogs sing love songs, and time keeps on ticking with the help of a lovesick clock-keeper who later believes himself to be the Queen of Spain. No one can accuse this show of being anything less than original.
Set in Gogol’s St. Petersburg township of Nevsky Prospect, the townspeople may not have much to say, but their imaginative and demonstrative actions speak louder than words, and are clearly effective too. NPR radio host Kitty Felde cleverly interweaves the three short stories into a patchwork of superb cohesion, a tall order considering the only similarity these stories share is in their sociopolitical overtone and ridiculous everyday elements.
Through a series of dance sequences and heavily mimed scenes, the townspeople make their introductions with their own brand of eccentricities. Among these Madame Magda, (Estela Garcia) trying to marry off her paper doll daughter, Oksana, Kovalev’s (Tom Ashworth) own brand of self-importance titling himself a “Very Important Person,” and a pair of butt-sniffing dogs with more to say than anyone in the hero township put together. Imagine if Brecht, Peter Brook and John Waters decided to direct a version of “Our Town,”—this would be their brainchild.
From the absurd to the extreme, the stories chronicle the strange occurrences in this tiny hamlet of oddities with the humble clock-keeper Aksenty (Ben Messmer) as a mute observer. Adapted from “The Diary of a Madman” Aksenty’s seeming out-of-place normality finally cracks in a showy, disturbing little number dressed up as the “Queen of Spain.”
In “The Nose,” the town’s self-appointed VIP Kovalev experiences a taste of humility and shame when he wakes up one day to discover he has no nose—quite a different problem than that of Cyrano de Bergerac. His nose grows, becoming a stalwart citizen of the town, upstaging his own VIP predecessor with self-sacrificing heroics until his true identity is revealed.
One of the most moving and brilliant performance is in the satire “The Overcoat,” as a poor mail clerk Akaky (Kristopher Lee Bicknell) endures bureaucratic red tape in getting his stolen overcoat replaced. Bicknell (who also doubles as the Nose leggy personality) is a master of the unspoken word, relying on movement and gesture to convey feelingly the character’s frustration and helplessness.
A newcomer to the theatre, composer Ego Plum’s varied and delightful score enriches the offbeat, moody tone. His clicking clock score is riveting and memorable. Along with his insightful repertoire in the show, his up-tempo numbers such as the opening umbrella sequence and the doggie-love ballad are kicky and fun.
But for all this, the puppets have it, multi-handedly stealing the show.
The puppet designs by Wes Crain, Lena Garcia, Elizabeth Luce, and Brian White are mesmerizing and dazzling. Using the puppets character to draw from the design, the puppets “come to life” with marvelous detail such as The Very Old Clerk—a rather scattered-brain editor, with a folded-up newspaper as his crown and a large monocle across from his hugely human seeing eye. The pair of mail clerks are a composite of letters, there is a Russian nesting doll, and a baker with a croissant for a mouth. And of these, the Tailor, a spindly talking pincushion with a wraith-like body of fabulous fabric swatches as he hovers seemingly from mid-air. The puppets become more human than their human counterparts with the beautiful attention to movement, sweeping, long-armed gestures and “invisible” puppeteers that seem to disappear onstage. Movement and puppet coaching by Jan Munroe and Christine Papalexis fully rounds off the Rogues diverse and cutting-edge troupe.
Of all the puppets, the only thing that was distracting was the piggy-nosed masks. Only a select few, the wealthier class, of the townspeople wore them, but other than a stab at classism, the effect appeared churlish and downright Orwellian in its “Animal Farm” appearance.
The first act provides most of the puppeteering eye-candy, and there’s plenty to feast your eyes on with the whimsical and inventive set design by Katie Polebaum, featuring cubbyholes, scrim screens for the shadow puppets, and a fanciful clock with an ever-changing illustrated face. But in terms of story and pace, the first act lags, artfully presenting but failing to do much more than that. The second act is worth the price of admission, with the bow-wow going to the dogs in a far-out, fantastic love song with winsome cardboard cutouts of glittery clouds and rainbows creating a zany, full-on campy effect. “The Overcoat” is brilliant and of all the stories the most mature and somberly riveting. It does end on a rather odd note, but for such an odd production, this seems quite apropos.
Go to the Gogol Project at The Bootleg Theatre, and be prepared to go just a little crazy.
“The Gogol Project”
Runs through Nov 1
Fri & Sat at 8pm
Sat & Sun at 3pm