Review: Everything you know is wrong!

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Kenneth Lee
Photo by Peter Wockniak

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"Everything You Know is Wrong" is both a hilariously surreal 1974 album by the The Firesign Theatre and a decent summary of "Caught," Christopher Chen's ingenious puzzle box of a play at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis studio theatre through March 25th (2018). It's almost too clever for its own good, but it does raise issues about the contextual nature of Truth in a thought-provoking and entertaining way that doesn't break the fourth wall so much as ignore it.

Providing too much information about "Caught" would ruin its many surprises, but I can at least give you the setup. As you enter the studio theatre you're given a program. But it's not for a play titled "Caught," it's for the conceptual art exhibition "Devil in a Red Dress" by Lin Bo of the Xiong Collective. Rep volunteers helpfully answer questions about the art on display, including the titular video piece projected on the center panels on stage. Then the lights dim and Lin Bo (actor Kenneth Lee) is introduced by director Seth Gordon (director Seth Gordon).

L-R: Kenneth Lee, Jeffrey Cummings, Rachel Fenton
Photo by Peter Wochniak

Lin Bo presents a slide show describing how China's autocratic leadership has co-opted protest art by displaying its own fake protest art in Peking's 798 Art District (a real place, although its history is more complex than Lin Bo would have us believe) and then details his harrowing experiences as a political prisoner, as recently described in a New Yorker article. He finishes his presentation, the lights dim again, and the panels behind him are drawn aside to reveal an office at The New Yorker where Lin Bo is being quizzed by the article's author, Joyce (Rachel Fenton) and her aggressively clueless editor Bob (Jeffrey Cummings). It seems that an independent investigation has turned up some holes in the artist's story.

And so it goes for a total of four scenes, each of which reverses and undermines what has gone before, mixing the real with the fictional and constantly changing the audience's expectations. It also challenges ideas of what and how we understand the nature of truth, most notably in a circumlocutory and increasingly bizarre interview with playwright Wang Min (Rachel Lin) that reduces her interviewer to tears.

L-R: Rachel Lin, Rachel Fenton
Photo by Peter Wochniak

And that brings me back to that four-man audio theatre group (now reduced to two due to mortality), The Firesign Theatre, because "Caught" parodies and defies the audience's expectations about theatre the way classic Firesign Theatre albums parodied and defied the audience's expectations about TV and radio. In "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers," for example, we're first presented with a service by Pastor Rod Flash of the First Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of the Blinding Light. Then the perspective changes and we're hearing the service in the background as George Leroy Tirebiter is watching it on TV. But then George orders a pizza and is sucked into the TV, where he becomes an aged version of himself on a TV talk show reminiscing about his old movies. Then someone changes the channel and we're hearing/watching one of those movies, "High School Madness." Eventually we learn that the person changing the channels is old George, who has been up all night watching himself on TV.

"Caught" isn't as deliberately surreal as the FT's work, but the repeated changes in perspective have the same dizzying effect, like a roller-coaster ride through a hall of mirrors. I think it fails to provide a coherent point of view on the issues it raises or to offer any real resolution, but maybe that's the point--the play may be over, but the story continues.

L-R: Rachel Lin, Kenneth Lee
Photo by Peter Wochniak

It is, in any case, superbly acted. Mr. Lee manages to make Lin Bo just phony enough to make his subsequent unraveling credible, but not so obviously bogus as to give away the game too early. Ms. Fenton's portrayals of both the flustered Joyce and the exhibit curator are finely shaded.

Ms. Lin does an equally impressive job in multiple roles, shifting personas almost imperceptibly as the script dictates. Mr. Cummings makes Bob's gradual change from dim to deranged hilariously believable. Yes, Bob is a one-joke character, but Mr. Cummings tells the joke well.

The backstage and technical aspects of the production are impeccable, as they so often are at the Rep. Mr. Gordon's direction follows the script's subtle changes in tone expertly. Robert Mark Morgan's simple but effective sets and Rusty Wandall's minimal but evocative sound add to the overall impact of the production.

"Caught" is, in short, a kind of theatrical thrill ride that dazzles, entertains, and provokes. Go and enjoy, but give yourself some time to discuss it afterwards with your friends. Odds are everyone will have different perspectives on what they have seen. Because, after all, everything you know is wrong.

Performances of "Caught" continue through March 25th downstairs in the studio theatre of the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus.

The Cliburn Report 14: 40 Great Unclaimed Melodies

[Thanks to The Firesign Theatre for the title of this post. If you haven’t heard the hilarious 1970 sketch in question, you owe it to your sense of humor to check it out. Some of you may even be old enough to remember the commercial—featuring Jack Benny’s long-time announcer Don Wilson—that inspired it.]

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[Note: this has been corrected based on information obtained from tinyurl.com/cliburn2013rep; viz. the anonymous comment]

"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze”

“I would while away the hours / Conversin’ with the flowers,” but instead I chose to devote the time spent in transit to the finals of the Cliburn International Piano Competition noting the musical canines that were silent, or very nearly so—that is, composers whose work was poorly represented or entirely absent during the three rounds of preliminary and semi-final recitals.

Let’s start with the dogs that didn’t bark at all.

One of only two known
photos of Alkan

Charles Valentin Alkan – Not a household name but certainly known among pianists. Granted, most of his stuff is fiercely difficult, but somebody could have taken on (say) Aesop’s Feast, the Sonatine, or the Barcarolle (with its prescient “blue” notes)—any of which would have been well within the capabilities of these technically proficient pianists. Besides, none of them appeared to shy away from technical challenges; Stravinsky’s thorny Trois mouvements de Pétrouchka was heard often as were works by Liszt (including 11 of the Transcendental Études by Vadym Kholodenko).

And, speaking of Stravinsky, the Pétrouchka suite was the only work of his on the bill.

François Couperin – Yes, he wrote for the harpsichord and organ rather than the piano, but so did Bach and that didn’t keep him off the program (although he didn’t appear that often either; three performances including a Siloti transcription).

John Field – Nothing from the inventor of the nocturne. In fact, no nocturnes at all. Maybe everyone was afraid of putting the audience to sleep?

George Gershwin – He's marginal in this context, perhaps, but surely his Preludes would have made an interesting addition.

Charles Ives

Charles Ives – Ives only wrote two piano sonatas, but they’re amazing pieces—and would surely have been appropriate for a competition held in America. Indeed, American composers were poorly represented in general.

Dimitri Shostakovich – Granted, Shostakovich might not be as well known for his piano works as Prokofiev (see below), but his Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues are real gems. It would have been nice to see a few performed.

These dogs, meanwhile, barked so little you could easily have missed them.

Albèniz – A prolific and popular composer for the piano, he’s represented only by Book 2 of Iberia (Tomoki Sakata)

Bartok – Again, a composer well known for his piano works, but represented by only three performances: the 1926 Sonata (Luca Burrato), the Étude, op. 18, no. 3 (Alexy Chernov), and Out of Doors (Beatrice Rana).

Grieg – Another prolific and popular composer of piano miniatures and one massively popular concerto, Grieg is represented by a whopping total of three pieces (two waltzes and a valse-impromptu, Alexey Chernov). I find this odd, to say the least. Is it because most of his work doesn’t offer the kinds of opportunities for flash that one finds in the work of (say) Liszt (who is very well represented)? Or has he simply fallen out of fashion?

Mendelssohn – Only three works: the Fantasy in F-sharp Minor, op. 28 (Scottish Sonata), the Sonata no. 3 in B-flat Major, op. 106, and Variations serieuses, op. 54.

Schubert – Only two Schubert works (if you count the Drei Klavierstücke as one piece, which I am)? Seriously? And not even major works at that: Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, D. 718 (Alessandro Deljavan) and Drei Klavierstücke, D. 946 (Claire Huangci). Truly a head scratcher.

Liszt by Lehmann

So who is well represented? Well, after Liszt, the biggies were Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven (including the challenging “Hammerklavier” sonata), Brahms, Rachmaninov, and Prokofiev.

Ravel looks to be well represented—sixteen performances—but those performances covered only five works including the multiples of Gaspard de la nuit. Still, they’re major works, so maybe that’s not a big deal.

What, if anything, does this mean? The Cliburn and other competitions have been criticized for encouraging safe repertoire and performance choices—a kind of reversion to the mean, in which idiosyncrasies are weeded out. I didn’t see enough of the preliminary and semi-final rounds to comment on the performance side, but it certainly does appear that, given the ability to choose their own music, contestants tend to go with the tried and true. What do you think?

Stage Left Podcast, 25 July 2009, Part 1

Originally broadcast April 12th, 2005 - Actor, writer and Firesign Theatre member Peter Bergman on the founding of America's premier (and only) surrealist audio theatre group, the Heartbreak of Radio, his TV soap opera doppelgänger, and other topics. Part 1 of 2. Click here to listen.

Who Am Us, Anyway?

[Thanks to The Firesign Theatre for the title.]

Through July 5th, Scott Miller's New Line Theatre is presenting the Midwest premiere of the musical High Fidelity. Reviews have been very favorable. One of those reviews, however, included a couple of comments that caused my Inner Curmudgeon to spring to life.

You can read the entire piece on line (at least until the publication in questions moves it to the archives, when you have to pay for the privilege of seeing it), but this is what made me all grumbly:

High Fidelity started out as a delightful novel by Nick Hornby, then turned into a cute movie starring John Cusack. But it's not an obvious candidate for the musical stage. That's because when we think of musicals, we tend to think of flashy extravaganzas.

My first complaint involves the use of the word “we”. Who is this word “we”? Did she have a mouse in her pocket? I'm a long-time lover of musical theatre and I certainly don't think of “flashy extravaganzas” when I think of musicals. I'll bet most of you reading this don't either.

Maybe I'm being too picky, but it bugs me to see writers use “we” when they really mean “I” or (maybe) “my friends and I”.

As far as whether or not the book was on "obvious candidate for the musical stage", I have to say that if The Lord of the Rings can be turned into musical theatre, pretty much anything is fair game. Would anyone have thought, a priori, that Tales of the South Pacific was a likely candidate for musical theatre? Or Les Miserables? Or Wicked? For that matter, who'd have thought that a painting by Seuralt could be the basis for a musical? It just takes someone with enough imagination to do the adaptation.

Art in almost any form is nearly infinitely transmutable, in my view. The product of any particular metamorphosis may or may not succeed, depending largely on the skill of the artist doing the adaptation, but almost anything is possible.

That's what we (Stuart Little and I) think, anyway.