Life and Times Episode 1 / Théâtre des Abbesses

Life and Times Episode 1

Théâtre des Abbesses

1-5 March 2011, 7.30pm

13-24 euros

Sung in English with English and French subtitles

***

Created and directed by Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, of experimental, New York-based company The Nature Theater of Oklahoma, this verbatim piece sets a telephone conversation to music composed by Robert M. Johanson.
Billed as "a marathon musical worthy of the word epic", Life and Times – Episode 1 derives from the first conversation Liska had with the subject of this study Kristin Worrall, wherein she makes the first attempt to tell her life story; spanning from her birth until her eighth year.  The NTO propose to stage the remaining hours of dialogue over the next 10 years, creating a total 24 hours of theatre.  An epic project indeed.  Yet the subject matter is stubbornly "average", recognisably what we have come to regard as "normal", an almost event-less narrative of a suburban American childhood; and it has a vocabulary to match.  Every single word of the conversation is translated onto the stage, resulting in a piece of musical theatre that could be subtitled 'The Unexpected Poetry of Er and Um'.

With a running time of over three and a half hours, this production is far too long.  Neither the subject matter nor the presentation style is capable of maintaining the audience's interest and by the end of the performance around two thirds have left.  The project of creating a poetry out of the prosaic, of discovering the profound in the quotidian, would have been undiminished by slicing off an hour and a half.

The ensemble performance delivered by Anne Gridley, Julie Lamendola and Alison Weisgall is truly impressive; polished to perfection, intelligent in its conception and consistently high energy.  Other performers, who take on comparatively minor roles during the play's second half, are less impressive and the stylistic disruption caused by the introduction of a jumbled male chorus undermines the production's effective minimalism.  Musicians Daniel Gower, Kristin Worrall and, in particular, Robert M. Johanson who composed all the music, provide much of the production's driving force from the tiny orchestra pit front of stage, collaborating with the physical performers to create an original piece of singing theatre as opposed to another example of cosy musical theatre.

Unfortunately, the theory of Life and Times Episode 1 is somewhat more interesting than its theatrical manifestation.  One leaves the theatre thinking it very clever but hardly anticipating the next instalment, let alone the further twenty-one hours of dressed-up, intellectualised banality to come.  A good opportunity to see The Nature Theater Of Oklahoma at work but from what is on show here in Abbesses, the hype seems to somewhat resemble the play; theoretically sound but rather unsubstantial and unsatisfying in reality.