“CASCADES OF CACA!! CASCADES OF CACA!!” How could I not laugh? It was so nonsensical and the energy of all of the actors was so awesome that when they spoke you could literally see the spit come out of their mouth. The three quarter round seating was very unique in the black box where at times it became super dark and suspenseful. Before this performance when I thought of a play I thought of a movie theater seating arrangement but instead of a screen there would be actors up on a stage giving a live performance. This was better than that. I could even say that this experience was even better than IMAX 3D (cheaper too). These actors were all in your face with the surrounding audience watching their every expression. The actors had to put in the extra effort to be able to be so close to their audience and their hard work paid off with a successful performance.
Going back to the actual content of the play. The plot made no sense to me at all. I was really not following anything that was going on other than the random humor that everyone else was laughing at too. I think I felt frustrated at first because I didn’t understand what any of this actually meant but then I was okay because no one else did either. So I realized that the point of the whole play was to be entertained in a way that would be somewhat unique to the way any other audience member would be entertained. Since the play was so random there were only certain parts I remember such as the story of the doctor who successfully performed liver surgery on himself but then failed on his patient or the controversial theory of whether or not a doorbell ringing implies that someone is there. I don’t think this play appeals to a New York City audience as a whole. The only people I can see attending this play are avid viewers of theater like the elderly audience that we saw at The Pearl. What you take or remember from the play can be so different from person to person that I would not be able to recommend this play to a friend because I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I’d probably just be in fear of them punching me in the face for showing them a play they didn’t understand and made them angry for wasting their money.
Was there even a plot? For me the plot was completely destroyed when the play ended at the beginning of the story but this time with the characters all switched around. That just left this big question mark ?stamped on my mind. What did that mean? Characters don’t matter? That the way we perceive things to be could be another way if we only knew? Now don’t kill me for comparing this to a video game but here I go. In this game “Batman Arkham Asylum” you play as Batman and you are driving the batmobile with tied up Joker in the passenger seat. You are driving him to the prison of the insane where he will be wheeled off and the guards and warden prepare for the highest security prisoner they could possibly ever have. How does this relate to the play we just saw? In the middle of playing the game there was one part where the game gets stuck and goes all the way back to the beginning but this time Joker is driving the batmobile and Batman is the one who is going to be the prisoner of the asylum. The writers of this game may have gone for the same effect and probably knew what Ionesco’s genre was known for. The perception of reality was gone. The characters in both the play and the game are in an endless loop in which they will always rely on each other to have a constant back and forth. Does it really matter to us if the Smiths become the Martins and the Martins become the Smiths? Their characters were not important as the heated convoluted conversation they had with one another. Batman catching Joker or Joker catching Batman shouldn’t matter because they are both insane and will only exist as a pair. The characters of this play are unimportant as individuals. The only thing that was important was the whole package.
