18. STOP THE TEMPO (May 31, 2013)
My
final show for May, STOP THE TEMPO, was in the unconventional locale of Arlene’s
Grocery, a funky Lower East Side venue (I’m tempted to say “dive”) on Stanton
Street between Orchard and Ludlow that has been something of a local
institution on the indie rock scene since 1995, and is here making its first
venture into legitimate theatre. The A/C felt like manna from heaven when I entered
the main saloon area just off the steaming street; from there I was led into a
separate barroom where the lights were so dim and the air so foggy that I could barely make out a bar along one side of the space. I sat at on
a barstool at one of several small, round tables, where the 25 or so eager
souls present were free to consume whatever liquid refreshments they’d brought
along from the bar outside. Sitting with me was an attractive middle-aged woman from Philadelphia
who said her son, Reuben Barsky, was one of the actors. With her was her older
son, Max, a powerful-looking guy who makes his living as a wrestler and stunt
man. Figuring out which actor was his brother was easy as there are only three players
in this work translated by Paul Meade from the Rumanian of rising Bucharest playwright
Gianina Carbunariu, and directed by the talented Belfast-born Matt
Torney.
Although STOP THE TEMPO, which previously has had
stagings in major European cities, is set in Bucharest
and the characters are all Rumanian, the profanity-laden dialogue (it ran into
censorship problems in Rumania) is so familiarly American in tone, and the young
actors’ personas are so recognizable that they might as well be New Yorkers; however, the theme driving the play would not be as urgent here because the
social and political circumstances are so different between the two countries.
America has long been the world’s most conspicuous consumer nation, while
Rumania has become obsessed with consumer culture only since the fall of
communism less than a quarter of a century ago. Apparently, some corners of
Rumanian society have been unable to comfortably absorb the rapid turnover to a culture
devoted to chain restaurants, international brand names, new homes, electronic
devices, shopping malls, flat-screen TVs, loud dance music, fancy cars, fashion
stores, media celebrities, and all the other excesses of capitalistic
globalization.
In the play, three wannabe hipsters who somehow find
it impossible to connect to the new Rumania--Paula (Olivia Horton), a
27-year-old lesbian; Maria (Sarah Silk), a 25-year-old beauty holding down
three jobs; and Rolando (Reuben Barsky), a 23-year-old guy with few prospects--meet by chance in a crowded Bucharest disco called Space and decide they have
something in common, although they’re not sure what. They bond for an evening
of sexual adventure and speeding in Maria’s car but end up in a collision that
causes Rolando to lose his hearing, although he is somehow able to hear his own
breathing, a metaphor for him and his newfound friends being out of synch with
the noisy society around them. After this unlikely trio connect with one another’s
budding nihilism, they decide to disconnect from what they believe to be the
clueless and empty consumerism of modern Rumania by cutting off the power to
various discos and other crowded establishments and sending everyone into confusion. These “terrorist” pranks
accumulate and grow bolder until tragedy inevitably strikes.
Almost the entire production is done in the near dark
with the actors—the women dressed in simple black, the man in a team
athletic jacket—lighting their own faces and the spaces around them with tiny
but powerful handheld flashlights. The only other lighting comes from sparingly
used disco strobes and three vertical strips of bright neon behind the bar. The
effect is eerie, especially as, for much of the hour-long piece, we get to see only
the harshly lit angles of the characters’ faces, with the rest of their bodies
remaining shadowy and indistinct. The flashlight use is closely choreographed
and executed with perfect timing, both in terms of when the lights go on and off, and
what they are intended to illuminate.
William Irons contributes a terrific sound design to
create the disco ambience, the effect of a speeding car, a car crash, and so on.
There is no “set” to speak of but Gabriel Hainer Evansohn is credited with “production
design,” which means, perhaps, the way the chairs and tables are arranged and
how the lights are used.
STOP THE TEMPO will be off most people’s radar, but if
you feel like exploring a very hip corner of the Lower East Side (lots of food
and boutiques now where once the pushcarts roamed), have an hour or so to spare
one warm summer night, and have a theatrical taste for something a little
different but not too demandingly avant-garde, you might do worse than stopping
by at STOP THE TEMPO.
