Eugene weekly., September 29, 2011, Page 33, Image 33

theater
Who’s Afraid of
Osama bin Laden?
lovers, this moment of national upheaval
presents itself as a kind of erasure: after
all, every ending is also a beginning. As
Ben’s cell phone incessantly rings, a sure
reminder of his wife and kids, he comes to
realize that he may be — he can be, should
he so chose — dead to the world. Should
he and Abby, suddenly shipwrecked in
time, start a life together anew? Do they
dare?
The collective tragedy of 9/11
becomes, in LaBute’s hand, something
extremely personal and existential, an
abstract device of deracination — Ben
and Abby are indeed uprooted, but only
from yesterday’s reality, when they
were the cheating husband and the other
woman. The tight, strangling atmosphere
of the play, which takes place entirely in
Abby’s apartment, has the feel of a fi lm
noir. For all the couple’s self-involvement
and romantic opportunism, the collapse of
the towers may just as well have been a
car crash, a fi re, a faked death. “Through
all the apocalyptic shit, I see a way for us
to go for it,” Ben tells Abby, who for her
part accuses Ben of using the attack as a
“meal ticket” to get her.
Hart and Newman are fi erce and
focused as the bickering couple,
maintaining a fever pitch of dialogue that
is impressive, and sometimes exhausting,
to behold. LaBute’s lines are blunt,
brutish and nasty — “fuck you” becomes
a kind of mantra of carnal confusion —
but both actors mine subtlety from the
Neil LaBute’s post-9/11 autopsy
N
eil LaBute has issues. A
graduate of theater at BYU who
was later “disfellowshipped”
from the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, LaBute’s plays revel
in an abrasive, anaerobic atmosphere
of nihilism in which gimpy characters,
short on introspection, become little more
than expectorants of extreme despair.
His career, which fi rst took off with the
malignantly brilliant 1997 movie In the
Company of Men, is beginning to look
like a forensic audit of what Tennessee
Williams liked to call mendacity — that
knot of lies, lust, hypocrisy and cowardice
which perverts our best intentions. LaBute
pens satires so harsh and depilatory they
make Mamet look mealy.
In The Mercy Seat, directed by Andy
Hock for Trial By Fire TheatreWorks,
LaBute sets his claustrophobic tale of
love, identity and betrayal on Sept. 12,
2001 — in the immediate aftermath of the
terrorist attacks. Ben Harcourt (Benjamin
Newman), a family man who might
otherwise be buried in the rubble of the
World Trade Center, instead fi nds himself
alone with his mistress and boss, Abby
Prescott (Emily Hart), in her Manhattan
apartment. For these two sad, solipsistic
M
usic, mania and Mediterranean-
blue make-up have created a
worldwide sensation — something
akin to a raging party and your favorite
painting giving birth to a theatrical experience.
So wailing on an instrument in a
massive, multimedia international outfi t
sounds like a musician’s dream job, right?
To get an answer, I rang up Blue Man strings
guy Jerry Kops as he idles in San Diego
before the group motors up to Eugene for
their early October engagement.
“Yeah, it’s awesome,” Kops says, just
waking up as I call him a few minutes
before noon.
Blue Man Speaks
Jerry Kops spills on the thrills of joining
Blue Man Group
pitiless barrage of abuse; Newman is by
turns frenetic and emotionally greedy, and
Hart, as both alpha and boss, is a canon of
feminine loathing, her contempt capped
only by regret. Whether desperately
embracing or trading barbs, Ben and
Abby recall another corrosive couple on
the boards, two souls engaged in a game
of emotional sabotage and romantic
brinksmanship; Labute might have
subtitled his play Who’s Afraid of Osama
bin Laden?
The question remains: Does The Mercy
Seat have a political bone in its body?
Yes and no. It has absolutely nothing
meaningful to say about the geopolitics
of terrorism, the collective psychology of
nationalism or the Bush Doctrine. LaBute
may be a misanthrope and a satirist,
but he is no Voltaire; the man has other
fi sh to fry. The play — so relentlessly
inward-turning it tears open a black hole
— diagnoses the effects of calamity on
a pair of solitary lovers so alienated and
narcissistic, so entranced by their own
bullshit, that they are trapped in eternal
limbo. Even together, they are alone.
Substitute “citizens” for “lovers,” and the
politics come clear. “I am saying that you
really dodged a bullet there, Ben,” Abby
says of his being in her apartment when
the planes hit. “A plane,” he says. “It was
a plane.” – Rick Levin
The Mercy Seat plays 8 pm Thursday, Sept. 29; Saturday,
Oct. 1; and Oct. 7-8, at Reality Kitchen, 245 Van Buren;
$10, info at trialbyfi retheatre.org or 683-1429.
audition led to another, and fi ve year’s later
he’s taking a break from the small NYC
venue to hit the road with the blue-painted
performers.
The dream isn’t always easy. In smaller
towns, the Blue Man Group performs split
weeks, with two days in one place, long
days of travel and then two in another.
“But I have a job doing what I love,” Kops
says. “I work for two hours and am paid a
full day’s wage.”
And it all seems worthwhile when
patrons travel miles from their tiny
Midwestern towns to see something
they’ve been waiting years for. “We met a
JAMES PORTO
‘I’ll just say keep your eyes opened. You’re gonna
feel it.’ – Blue Man Jerry Kops
29 SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
Kops, a native New Yorker (if I’m
allowed to judge by his accent), was
working 12-16 hour days at multiple gigs:
as a registered nurse or in his family’s
machine shop, and playing at night in bar
bands. On a trip to Las Vegas, his wife
talked him into seeing Blue Man Group.
“I kept telling her, ‘We’re New Yorkers,
why would we see a show on vacation?
We can see it at home.’” But tickets were
purchased, and Kops was sold. “I was
enthralled by the musicians,” he says,
the electricity of excitement warming his
voice.
It took a little more pressure from his
wife to get Kops to audition for the group.
“I fi gured for something this big you had
to know somebody,” he says. But one
(teenage) kid who said he’d wanted to see
us since he was 10,” Kops says.
When the boys in blue roll into town
on Tuesday, Oct. 4, you can look for Kops
on the strings. The two strings players
rotate positions, so he’ll either be rocking
the Chapman stick and base, or working a
guitar and an electric zither.
When I asked him if there was
anything a fi rst-timer should look for,
Kops laughed. “Coming from the small,
organic experience of the New York show
to the advanced, technological, multimedia
touring show, I’ll just say keep your eyes
opened,” he says. “You’re gonna feel it.”
– Anna Grace
Blue Man Group performs Oct. 4-6 at Hult Center. Info
& tickets at hultcenter.org or 682-5000
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