ARTS

Suicide attempt successful

by Jamie Graves

Theater of the absurd is a hard thing to pull off well. After figuring out just what in the world the script is talking about, the ideas then have to be transferred to the stage. Theater of the absurd is highly visual: characters not only have to be played as people, but also as symbols and stereotypes.

If the director, cast, and various visual designers for the performance don�t have a clear view of what exactly is going on, then the audience won�t have a clue. However, the production of Suicide in Bb this past weekend in Asia House Lounge more than filled the bill.

Directed by Aaron Birk, Sam Shepard�s play about the death of the American icon and the nature of celebrity was magnificently played. The action began as two Sam Spade-esque detectives enter an apartment to investigate the apparent suicide of a jazz musician named Niles (Sound familiar? Hmm...). Justin Sifford-Angotti and Jim Hodge made a phenomenal pair as the detectives Pablo and Louis. Sifford-Angotti played the perfect Sam Spade straight man persona against Hodge�s desperate comic madness.

The investigation began to take a turn for the surreal as musician friends of Niles enter, decked out in impossibly bright bohemian clothes. The play then explored the relationship of artists with society, and whether they have the right tear down conventions founded by the blood of the World War II generation. An entirely new dimension is added to the play when a posthumous Niles begins to observe, comment, and take part in the discussions between the radical bohemians and conservative, realist detectives.

Adam Marvel filled the demanding part excellently, giving a wonderfully understated performance as a quietly suffering idealist looking at a dying America. His performance, like many of the cast members�, brought the abstraction out of Shepard�s demanding script and gave it an emotional urgency that made the performance immediately as well as intellectually exciting.

Also of note was Peter Blasser�s excellent score, which set the backdrop for the bizzare proceedings. It called to mind the later work of Tom Waits, with its percussion and dissonant guitars. Also like Waits, it loosely hinted at country and jazz styles, while retaining dissonant and dark undertones. It commented and laughed along with the characters, highlighting some of the jokes and adding force to the monologues.

I had a ball at this play. The sum of these parts was a riotously funny satire of traditional American roles like avant-garde artists, cowboys and detectives that had myself and the rest of the audience laughing out loud. I actually laughed so hard I cried. In addition, it was an intellectually challenging play, one that didn�t give itself up easily, and I found myself considering and discussing it for a few days after. I give Suicide in Bb two thumbs up. WAY UP.

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Copyright © 1998, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 127, Number 12, December 11, 1998

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