Theater Review |
Circuses offer multiple diversions — music, animals, jugglers, clowns and trapeze artists. Sarah Hammond's absurdist play "Circus Tracks" has all that and much more. Unfortunately, what works under the big top doesn't work to create a coherent drama.
Hammond suggests her play is a fairy tale centered in a circus — but even fairy tales are focused. Her substories and their themes haven't achieved connection.
An abandoned infant floats down river to suburbia. She takes a picaresque journey to find her birth mother. A villainous circus manager steals the talents of his players. A heartbroken and guilty trapeze artist seeks his identity and redemption. In the end everything's destroyed.
God places his handprint on these happenings, and through it all the audience is asked to consider the relationship between reality and illusion, normalcy and freakishness, and the flow of life. Despite director Meghan Arnette's efforts to juggle the themes, stories and comic and tragic components, she never finds the balance.
Yet there are good elements to this production. The imaginative set and lighting by Arnette with Brian Stricklan, Grant Laine and Chrystian Shepperd work well. Entering the theater, the audience walks through the red and white tent flaps into the big top, where strings of glittering lights circle the ring; wall murals depict a growling lion, bulbous-nosed clown and other circus icons. The trapeze is mounted at waist level so the daring high flyer never gets off the ground. It's a clever device that works effectively as an image and a symbol.
Overall the cast is good and provides some notable performances. Christine Longé as Dewey, the abandoned child, manages to be destructive in a charmingly innocent fashion. Colin W. Connors as Lester, the tormented and abused trapeze artist, and Adam Davis as Soundbite, who is defined by his noises, both wring pathos from their roles.
Luigi Pirandello, the great absurdist playwright, famously told the tale of six characters in search of an author. In "Circus Tracks" we have seven characters in search of a well-structured play.
Nancy Worssam: nworssam@earthlink.net
See Also
