PLAY WITH REPEATS
at Angel Island
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Instead, Crimp’s antihero, Anthony Steadman, not only discovers how helpless he is to improve his life, but also must face just how truly miserable he is, was, and ever will be. (If Crimp had written It’s a Wonderful Life, the movie would have ended with Jimmy Stewart leaping to his death moments after telling Clarence the Angel to piss off.) Repeating the past only makes Steadman more aware of his failings. He still loses the promotion, still fails to win the girl. And we get the feeling that given a thousand repetitions, he would still experience his life as a series of humiliations and defeats.
In fact, but for one misstep in casting–the choice of Lawrence Novikoff to play the central role of Steadman–this might have been an incredible show. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter one bit that Musial created a great set or that every other actor in the show is working double time–because there in every scene is one-note Novikoff, droning his way through the play, reading every single line with the same whiny inflection. Never for a moment do we empathize with Steadman’s plight, nor do we ever completely understand why he does what he does. Steadman becomes a cipher we have no interest in decoding.
Director and puppeteer Steele has assembled a troupe of young, committed performers who are perfectly comfortable with her daring hybridization of techniques from mime, modern dance, and puppet theater–she worked for a while with the Hystopolis Puppet Theatre–and who are equally at home performing in masks and operating Steele’s rod-controlled puppets. It’s hard not to be impressed watching them move gracefully around the stage, communicating so much with just a nod or a roll of a shoulder.
