Raven's Seed
Outdoor productions are already a relative rarity in Michigan, but what sets Raven’s Seed apart is its added mobile element. Matrix Theatre’s unique take on playwright Stephen Most’s script travels outside, inside, and at a handful of locales within a generous block of the company’s permanent home; the bold choice brings stark focus to director Shaun Nethercott’s didactic calamity of worlds colliding.
A communion of archetypal animals populates the establishing outdoor scenes. They speak in ominous tones about the nuclear facility looming upriver, in whose proximity tough Bear (Krista Schafer) contracted an illness that mystifies impertinent healer Coyote (Maurizio Rosas-Dominguez), and whose effect on the water is being felt by the likes of graceful Sturgeon (Matios Simonian). The others warn burgeoning leader Raven (Rodolfo Villareal) away from investigating the human intrusion, including generous pauses to reference origin myths: when darkly off-kilter Loon (Schafer, in a dual role) razed the early world, and when plucky Raven — or, technically, his ancestor — stole the sun from its captors at the expense of his plumage. Masked by oversized puppet heads, skillfully woven and crafted of natural materials, the actors use generous, committed movement to embody the animals’ physical selves and offset their unchanging faces. Nethercott lends these earthen scenes a reverent pace, filling them with old-world grandeur.
A team of facilitators helps to shepherd the audience between locales; these assistants also use live sound effects to widen the chasm between the natural and industrial worlds. Back in the lab, inventive Dr. Ollie Liverwurst (Dan Woitulewicz) has partnered with Dr. Stanley Opportune (Dan Jaroslaw) to perfect his groundbreaking method of extracting pure plutonium; for Ollie, the promise of an unlimited worldwide energy source (and no shortage of renown) is worth some pithy collateral damage. It’s Stanley’s bright and diligent daughter (Erin Hildebrandt), herself a scientist, who surveys the surrounding area and pipes in with the voice of reason, warning of the environmental ramifications and hazards of pursuing nuclear power. Yet Woitulewicz and Jaroslaw don intentional oblivion to form a comic partnership based on mutual buffoonery — look no further than the characters’ first names for the source of the playwright’s inspiration. Their patter is characterized by bumbles and stumbles; rapid-fire vaudevillian word play is difficult enough without adding multisyllabic scientific jargon to the mix. For her part, Hildebrandt fulfills her soapbox hero role with receptive intelligence and winning confidence, despite being physically hindered and vocally muffled by a wildly creative costume.
Between the friendly ancient wisdom and grace of the animals and the doddering idiocy of the humans in charge, the play’s message couldn’t be louder or clearer if it were delivered by bullhorn at close range. The incongruity of the disparate spheres is further magnified by every short walk to see how the other half lives, with time enough to shake off the former mood and arrive at what feels like a different piece altogether. (Novelty aside, a mobile production has its disadvantages; here, what might have been a brisk hour’s running time is nearly doubled, without an intermission.) Yet this doesn’t stop the story of Raven’s Seed from continuing on a creaky continuous roll toward its space-age climax, as Raven infiltrates the human realm to save the world from a danger he cannot comprehend.
Nethercott strings together the far-flung, deliberately incompatible elements of this Raven’s Seed by launching every last one at a common target: the laughable futility, and the ultimate peril, of harnessing nuclear power. Although the production’s disjointed delivery may drain some tension from the gravity of the message, the various parts hang together with a pleasant silliness; viewers prepared to take a literal journey in tandem with the story’s instructive one may be charmed by the surprising creative freedom afforded by this unusual presentation.
May 19, 2012