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L.A. Weekly
review by Paul Birchall
Don't let the disconcerting title put you off. Playwright Jackie Sibblies
Drury's compelling drama is a stunning work of ferociously creative
stagecraft. In director Jillian Armenante's deceptively improvised-seeming
production, a group of actors, under the leadership of a young, angry
actor (Julanne Chidi Hill, fierce), attempt to stage a play about a
19th-century African atrocity during which the German army slaughtered
entire populations of African tribes. It sounds dire, I know, but the tale
is told impressionistically, sometimes as a rehearsal exercise, sometimes
as a dreamlike set of dances, fights and interactions.A ladder becomes a
railroad trestle, a Sparkletts water bottle becomes a tribal drum, and
Spolin-esque theater games are mocked but then utilized to make searingly
powerful emotional points about race and morality. Through exercises meant
to channel an atrocity, the cast simultaneously juggle a number of issues,
from the near-comic self-absorption of actors, to the ultimate inability
to depict true evil, to a final, unbearably disturbing coda that suggests
the past is not nearly as distant as one would wish. Armenante's assured
intellectualization and the perfect comic and dramatic timing of the cast
together craft a rare work of charged political agitprop that awakens us
to the pure imaginative potential of the theater.
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