"Over the Mountains, Across the Sea"
Nowadays, the word “border” is so fraught that seeing it in
a play title instantly sets up expectations. To what borders might it be
referring? National ones, political ones, social ones, economic ones, sexual
ones? Whatever they are, it’s easy to imagine that a play called 17 Border Crossings will be provocative.
Disappointingly, Thaddeus Phillips’s one-man play of that name, while fitfully amusing,
is a trip of a different color. |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
17 Border Crossings (seen at BAM in 2015) is
a non-chronological Cook’s tour of Phillips’s world travels, satirizing his
experiences in crossing 17 borders from one nation to another over the course
of nearly 30 years. The earliest is 1991, when he went from Holland to France via
Belgium by autobus. The two latest are from 2018, both involving Mexico and the
U.S.A., one journey made by K-Mart plastic raft, the other by bridge.
 |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
His trips also include crossings between Morocco and
Columbia; Israel and Jordan; Israel and Croatia; Egypt and Gaza; Canada and
Cuba; Singapore and Bali; and a number of other locations, mostly off the beaten
path.
 |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
After beginning with a lighthearted history of passports, prefaced
by the “St. Crispin’s Day” speech from Henry
V (Henry is credited with
inventing the modern passport), Phillips
crosses the dramatic terrain into comical recollections of what, in retrospect,
were likely Kafaesque situations with incompetent, frequently officious customs
personnel. Here and there, he also provides colorful, tongue-in-cheekish historical
or cultural commentary.
 |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
Anyone who’s traveled internationally knows how it feels to go
through the process, smiling nervously when showing one’s passport to officials,
American or otherwise, regardless of being innocent of malfeasance. In one
incident, in fact, Phillips recalls being pulled aside by a U.S. Customs agent at
Newark’s Liberty Airport. When Phillips asked what he could do to avoid something similar
in the future, the answer was: Just don’t travel.
 |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
There aren’t as many laughs as one could wish but Phillips, a
genial, goateed fellow in his 40s, in a tieless white shirt and blue blazer, with
cream-colored slippers, is an ingratiating raconteur. His bag of tricks
involves using foreign accents and even bursting into the language of the officials,
whose speech he replicates (whether authentically or in well-observed gibberish
is sometimes hard to tell).
 |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
He works on a mostly bare stage that he designed, with a
coffee cup, a lamp, a desk, a chair, a mic, and lighting bar that descends when
needed. A huge boost is provided by Tatiana Mallarino’s very clever staging,
which has him pop up all over the space; David Todaro’s surprisingly complex
lighting, always ready with a pin spot where Phillips chooses to stick his
head; and the deft sound design of Robert Kaplowitz, which allows the mic to be
used both for general amplification and for that loud but intimate sound you
get from putting your mouth near metal.
|
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
Having done the Israel-Jordan crossing myself only a few
months ago, its description was of particular interest. The foolishness Phillips
encountered was not quite the same foolishness as what I went through but it
was close enough. I’d touch on a few other of his other memorable happenstances
but no script was available for review and the auditorium was so dark my notes
came out looking like ancient Persian (which, unfortunately, I don’t read).
 |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
17 Border Crossings,
overlong at an hour and a half, never crosses the border into direct commentary
about any specific migratory crisis, neither our current one with Central
America, nor those plaguing Europe and the Middle East, nor any in Africa or
Asia. You can, if you must, assume that its message is allusive but its hard to
see it as much more than an intermittently funny satire on the complexities of crossing
from one territorial domain to another.
 |
| Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin. |
New York Theatre
Workshop
79 E. 4th
St., NYC
Through May 12
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