Jill's PLAF Diary for Monday, September 3

Performance: An·'tis·a·lon (Kaibutsu) (Future Showtimes)

One of the things I love so much about the Live Arts and Fringe Festivals is the audience who goes to see the shows. The people waiting to see these shows usually aren't your standard theatre-going audience, or, if they are, they're more relaxed than they are at more traditional shows. They talk to you while you're standing in line. They offer alternative suggestions about other shows to latecomers who arrive to a sold-out production. They say "bless you" if you sneeze. Maybe the weather is what puts everyone in such a good mood. Or maybe people just really really love the Fringe. Either way, if you want to meet a bunch of really great people, go see a show sometime in the next ten days.

An·'tis·a·lon
I got home from Kaibutsu's Live Arts show and headed straight to Wikipedia for some Greek Tragedy refreshing. As familiar as I am with the various Oedipus legends, I'll admit that I'd pretty much forgotten the story of his children/siblings (incest is best...). So while I really enjoyed An·'tis·a·lon, I didn't feel comfortable writing a review without doing a little Wiki research first. (Yeah, I know. Unreliable. Blah blah. I think you'll find that if you check the "Antigone" page, you'll find it to be pretty unobjectionable.) Anyway, now that I am Wiki-refreshed, the review can proceed as planned.

An·'tis·a·lon is an atmospheric show, staged in a Rittenhouse Square salon around the conceit that Antigone (Chanelle Benz)'s sister, Ismene (Macah Coates), is giving a beauty consultation to the audience: helping them to discover their outer beauty by identifying their signature colors (spring, summer, autumn, or winter). To demonstrate, she begins applying makeup on her recently-deceased sister, who, we discover, has hanged herself (out of some sense of destiny?). But somehow, the strange application of her proper colors revives Antigone, and the play moves away from Ismene's strange and rather self-indulgent monologue and into the stuff of Greek tragedy.

And it's with the Greek tragedy that things get really interesting. Writer/director Ryder Thornton captures the traditional masked tragedy aesthetic perfectly, instructing his performers that, once they don their papier-mache masks (which lend a surprising echo to the timbre of the actresses' voices), they are to move mechanically, facing forward and with large, sweeping gestures. The contrast between the traditional and contemporary styles is exceptional, and as the action moves back and forth across the salon, the story unfolds in an interesting, if sometimes slightly confusing, manner with an interesting twist on the traditional ending.

A note, however, to the An·'tis·a·lon's producers: when a play has a program, it's nice to have it before the play starts, not on the way out the door. I understand that the atmospheric nature of the production meant that there was no lobby to sit in in which to ponder the program, but it's still nice to have that information on hand at the top of the show.