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Two reveries on the nature of love are being presented at the Theatre Project as part of QuestFest, an international visual theater festival taking place at three Baltimore venues. The curtain-raiser is a wordless but searing short piece by Chimaera Physical Theater of Massachusetts. Created and performed by Mollye Maxner and Kelly Parsley, Into the Night chronicles a lifetime of passion in an intense 20 minutes. The relationship between Maxner's and Parsley's nameless characters begins confrontationally, with each circling the other while holding stools, lion-tamer style. This foreshadows more violence to come. Lean and sporting long hair tied back in three braids, Maxner is considerably smaller than tall, chunky Parsley, but to the strains of Tom Waits' "Clap Hands," she slaps him across the face twice and even throws him on the floor by his hair. Somehow this fury is transformed into love, and in a cleverly choreographed, mimed sequence, the couple fast-forward through marriage (indicated by exchanging imaginary rings), children (indicated by Maxner outlining a pregnant belly, then handing Parsley an invisible infant) and child-rearing (indicated by setting invisible babies down, then motioning upward as they grow). Suddenly, Parsley's character dies, and Maxner, bereft, sits him back on his stool. Parsley suggests lifelessness so convincingly, you keep expecting his inert body to topple over as Maxner sits opposite him, silently raging, then weeping. Moved by this, Parsley's spirit rises and dances with Maxner to Waits' "Tom Traubert's Blues," which contains passages from "Waltzing Mathilda." Not all of the actions in Into the Night are this clear, but when Maxner waltzes with her lost love, the couple plumb poignant depths of love and longing.
They're chick-flick cute, but with a twist - Phoebe communicates only in Auslan (Australian Sign Language), which Sam barely knows. Their initial efforts at mutual understanding are amusingly sweet. To tell Phoebe that something was "all in the past," for example, Gorski's Sam executes a few quick backward kicks. And, when Sam cooks Phoebe a seafood dinner, he tells her the ingredients by offering goofy imitations of everything from a clam to an eel. The most delightful part of the show, however, comes when they set up housekeeping. Their new home has walls made of white paper panels, and armed with cans of black spray paint, they cheerily paint outlines of furniture, a potted plant - even a goldfish in a bowl. Before long, Sam is pretty proficient at signing. But other things - his constant TV watching, her sloppiness - begin to grate on the relationship. Their breakup is depicted in a manner so ingenious, I don't want to give it away. Sam and Phoebe do get back together, however, and their rapprochement is portrayed in dance. (The jaunty score, heard throughout the piece, ranges from selections by Australia's The Waifs to Sinead O'Connor and Southern Culture on the Skids.) The show's hopeful final image is achieved by Asphyxia - an accomplished acrobat - performing an agile balancing act with Gorski. Not only a neat physical feat, it's appropriate thematically. After all, balancing acts are at the heart of most relationships. >>> "Into the Night" and "Blood Makes Noise" Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St. Through Sunday. $16. Call 410-752-8558 or theatreproject.org. |
The second half of the bill is an Australian work called Blood
Makes Noise, which, despite its portentous title, offers a
lighter look at love. Asphyxia, a mono-named deaf performer
who also directed and co-wrote the piece (with Amanda Owen),
plays a dancer named Phoebe who becomes involved with a hearing
man named Sam (Daniel Gorski).