A BUTTERFLY THAT’S STILL IN THE COCOON
Katherine Noon’s latest ensemble workshop-developed hydra creation, The Bargain and the Butterfly, takes its inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Artist of the Beautiful. In Hawthorne’s tale, Owen Warland works at a watchmaker’s shop; he is a brilliant fool with a heart of gold who is more caught up with his own private projects than doing the work his boss and customers entrust him to do. However, he finds personal vindication when his creation, a butterfly, comes to life upon its presentation to the Watchmaker’s daughter, Annie.
Ghost Road Company’s Butterfly wildly transmogrifies the text and incorporates elements of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with its ideas about creation and the nature of life, and Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke with its prolonged discussions about the soul. The tinkerer-inventor is Annie, not Owen, and the action takes place in Annie and her father’s flat, not a watchmaker’s shop. Annie spends her time developing an invention (a synthetic soul) while battling the demons that haunt her head: the spirit of her twin brother Owen, who died when they were born, and her mother. Annie’s father encourages her to go into town, and does not like how much of a shut-in existence his daughter leads. A glass-blower named Danforth takes a liking to Annie, and seeks not only to help complete her invention, but also to be someone who completes her. Engaging in such a relationship may be more intense than what Annie is capable of handling.
Christel Joy Johnson runs around frazzled and flummoxed as the mad (or is she?) genius Annie, and though she plays up the appropriate frustration, at times her performance felt forced and beyond her depth. Brian Weir locks in with quirky and odd behavior as Annie’s fraternal twin, Owen, and as a result, what is interesting at first becomes a one-dimensional performance. Ronnie Clark’s John Muir-like visage is more interesting then his uninspired, wooden performance of the Father. Doug Sutherland’s glass blower Danforth elicits moments of tender passion for Annie. Jen Kays’ vibrant and exciting performance stands out like a thoroughbred amongst mules: Her dynamic characterization of an off-the-rails genius invigorates the production with vivid verve, an aspect that lacks greatly when she is absent from the action.
Maureen Weiss’ production design has the stale air of an eighties GDR flat; shades of grays mixed with unflattering, utilitarian furnishings, including a bookshelf filled with messily arranged books and timepieces. The stage becomes littered with pages as they are torn out of books and ripped into pieces, and strewn on the floor; at times the actors are kind enough to eat the pages, and generate less of a mess. Cricket S. Myers’ sound design is full of moody uterine sounds and mysterious atmospheric textures. Ronnie Clark’s minimal lighting design often relies on the actors to light each other, and it does provide the close-quarters environment an effective intimacy.
The Bargain and the Butterfly requires more tinkering and development because it suffers an identity crisis. Is this about a mad woman? Is this about a woman who can’t create because domineering males are oppressive in her life? Is it about the nature of souls? Is it about dealing with demons? The piece tries to be about all these things and handles them with intelligent build-up, but poor follow-through. One example would be the play’s search for the “missing part” of the soul. To reveal any more would “spoil” a key plot point, but whereas Mary Shelley utilized the power of electricity intelligently and effectively, Butterfly makes the missing ingredient something so carnal and commonplace that it shortchanges the intellectual discussions and heady ideas introduced and developed before. It ends up being synecdochic to conceiver-creator-director Katherine Noon’s piece as a whole. Ultimately, the intriguing dialogue and gritty environment created by the designers come undone with incoherent, schizophrenic structure, baffling plotting, and generally weak performances.
photos by Patti McGuire
The Bargain and the Butterfly
The Ghost Road Company at Artworks Theatre
scheduled to end on April 7, 2013
for tickets, visit http://www.ghostroad.org