THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH
Such high expectations were initially confirmed. Upon arriving at the cabaret-style performance space, each audience member was handed a section from the Tribune instead of a program and told to become familiar with it before the show started. My friends and I dove into the task, eager to absorb the nuances behind the headlines. With the remarkable events unfolding in the Soviet Union, and the discovery that Richard III may have suffered from idiopathic pituitary dwarfism, the theatrical possibilities seemed limitless.
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The show’s opening moment offers another potential level of sophistication, this time unexpected. Instead of simply presenting prepared scenes, the cast ask the audience to identify news items that have captured their attention in reading through the paper. From these suggestions they will create improvised scenes exploring these bits of news. Not only is the show to be created spontaneously, but the cast imply they’re familiar with all the news of the day.
They were handed a second scene on yet another silver platter: an audience member mentioned reading about Mikhail Gorbachev dolls. Given the nearly melodramatic nature of the Soviet coup (at least as it has been presented by the media) and the recent musings as to whether Gorbachev might have staged the coup himself, there could not have been a better theatrical device for exploring these issues than a Gorbachev doll.
Throughout the second act, the quasi-fascist state presented as America in 1999 is blamed on the demise of the Democratic Party. For example, an “official” at a bank says to his disgruntled customer, “Why do you want to bring the Democrats back? Aren’t you happy with the current political system?” Statements like this demonstrate the group’s naivete. If we’re talking about a political system, the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same system–they’re interchangeable.
