Yellow Rabbit’s Dream Machine nearly complete
One Yellow Rabbit’s Ottawa debut comes in a flashing tangle of limbs, a ringing soundscape, and, above all, in sublime words. It is a stylish and extremely ambitious presentation, a homage to the literary Beat movement of mid-century America, centred on the legendary (and Canadian-inspired, incidentally) mechanical device that gives the play its name: the Dream Machine.
It is a production of genuine quality from the outset. Even before the show begins, we are lulled into the shadowed demi-world of a hypnotic soundscape as the performers fall into place silently behind a smoky screen. Michael Green begins the show with a marvellous reading of Allen Ginsberg’s sublime poem America. Voices are firm and unwavering, with excellent diction, and remain so though their wildest physical exertions. As befits the experienced cast, the singing is superb – coupled with a wonderful instrumental array, the songs usually maintain a sharp individuality, through this gets more difficult near the end of the 90-minute piece.
But in the realm of movement, a slight imbalance appears. Denise Clarke and Onalea Gilbertson are wonderful, with Clarke displaying the effortless and compelling bodily precision of a truly excellent dancer, but the men lag behind their level of skill, occasionally looking awkward in comparison (and awkward-looking simulated sex brings up too many of my teenage memories for comfort). The choreography also falls occasionally into a habit of focusing on too many hand motions.
But these are nit-picking. My only real issue is that as a philosophic representation of a real artistic movement, the show is incomplete. You see the beat-down, the beat-up, the lowest of needle-lit low; you’ve got the ecstatic pursuit of new artistic and sexual frontiers – the radical chase for pleasure; but what is lacking is the absolutely serious spiritual dimension of the project. These men believed that their dissolution of the morals of modern America served a purpose. The goal was the radical redefinition of the failed system of linked values (artistic/political/social) that had led the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. By losing track of this one element, the show occasionally loses the razor-sharp power generated by the subject matter. They were lunatics, but they were “holy lunatics,” as Ginsberg would say. Sacred and serious.
Consider the piece We Are The Beats. It is a terrific representation of this generation of artists. It shows what history does: hard-drinking iconoclasts, substance-mad, skipping lightly through sexual encounters, using this as fuel to create. When the five Rabbits dance in joyful unison they form a beautifully absurd carnival, poignantly represented with the line “we’ll make a mess of your success.” With the reading of Ginsberg’s America still ringing in our ears – the spiritual, serious core at the heart of this movement – this dance becomes a complex statement of philosophical purpose. But the show doesn’t seem to maintain that balance between comedic revel and seriousness that would elevate the whole to greatness.
As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – Oct 26, 2006
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=10675
