Saturday, June 1, 2013

18. Review of STOP THE TEMPO (May 31, 2013)

 

 
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.