Fractured Fables
Our critic is so over the Unknown Theater
By Don Shirley
On a promotional card for the Unknown Theater’s Fables du Theatre, a quote from L.A. CityBeat (translation: yours truly) calls the Unknown “the coolest theater in L.A.”
What do critics know? Or so I grumbled as I sweltered at the Fables premiere last Friday. Not only was the actual temperature in the theater hardly “cool,” but the Unknown programming no longer seems nearly as cool, culturally, as it did just 18 months ago.
Maybe it’s because the Unknown’s first 18 months were so creative and so brilliantly executed that they were an impossibly hard act to follow. The theater opened with an intriguing revival of an obscure American play, Johnson Over Jordan, in October 2005. I missed the second major theatrical production, Scenes From an Execution, but each of the next five that I saw – The Hothouse, Everyman for Himself, The Playground, Don’t Look Now and The Serpent – offered something fresh and exciting. (The Unknown also offers shorter runs of dance programs, most of which I haven’t seen.)
Since that streak ended with last year’s magical Serpent, I haven’t been able to enthusiastically recommend anything at the Unknown. Caligula, Walking Into Traffic, Attempts on Her Life (a co-production with the previous “coolest theater,” the Evidence Room), Naked Yoga, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Kingdom Come – all of them were significantly flawed.
At first, when Caligula and Walking Into Traffic disappointed, I repeated the mantra that every company is entitled to failures now and then – art would atrophy without the freedom to take risks that sometimes don’t work out. But the new Fables du Theatre is so enervatingly slapdash that I’m now wondering if the Unknown has more serious problems.
Fables is supposedly a co-production with “Immanence Theatre Artists” (or, as it’s spelled on the program but not in the press release, “immanEnce”). According to the press release, Immanence is “known for the adventuresome explorations of architecture, satires of social construction and guerrilla theatre tactics,” concentrating on site-specific work.
Although I see about 300 shows a year in L.A., to me this Immanence group was, well, an unknown theater. So I asked a few questions and learned that it’s a put-on. Co-writer Brenda Varda told me that she created “Immanence” for this production. She even created a website for it – and a fake-news article on that website, about a previous Immanence street-theater production that culminated in an arrest.
The bogus website is actually more entertaining – and claims less of your time – than Fables du Theatre, which is purported to be an adaptation of three French tales by Varda and “Immanence artistic director” Marva Lewis. Co-directing Fables are Unknown artistic director/designer Chris Covics and Lewis.
The fables themselves feel like half-baked drama school exercises without much point or polish. They’re surrounded by a thick layer of meta-theatrical cliches – we glimpse backstage chaos before the first fable begins, and a planted heckler in the audience questions Lewis between fables and later joins the action. I left the theater unsure of whether Fables was a satire of bad avant-garde theater or merely an example of it.
I’m still rolling that distinction around in my brain. Varda e-mailed me that “Immanence” was created “to heighten the role of the artists that dare under extreme circumstances to create no matter what the conditions” – a sentiment that takes the whole production awfully seriously.
The problem is that this spoof just isn’t very funny (although a claque of onlookers who stood near the back, laughing aggressively at nearly every gesture or word, apparently disagreed). Nor is it necessary, considering the world’s many more tempting targets. Still, it’s a relief to learn that “Immanence” isn’t for real – it allows more latitude to hope that the Unknown might soon return to the accomplishments of its glory months.
Fables du Theatre, Unknown Theater, Hollywood. (323) 466-7781. unknowntheater.com.
For more reviews, go to lacitybeat.com, click on LA&E and Stage.
Published: 08/20/2008
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