Fringe, Reviewed: Deep Blue Sleep
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"Dreams...they've always been in us and we've never fully understood how or why they happen."
[ theater ]
Deep Blue Sleep, by Found Theater Company
Attended: Mon. Sept. 8, 6 p.m., Painted Bride; closes Sept. 21, 1:30 p.m.
Dive into a world of sailboats, sea creatures, and sirens for a flowing stream of maritime lullabies.
WE THINK:
This is a collective-created work that really works. The intrepid Found Theater ensemble, formed by Temple University undergrad theater students in 2009 and creators of three previous FringeArts shows (Event End, 2011; Electric Jungle, 2012; and This is the Twilight Kingdom, 2013), creates a charmingly magical, yet sometimes macabre, nautical lullaby -- what they term "when dreams and the sea collide."
Director Alison Mae Hoban and designers Joe Wozniak (costumes, gallery) and Justin Howe (lighting, "lore master") transform the Painted Bride's two-floor gallery into a fluid set of suggested spaces: a children's bedroom, a pirate ship, a sailor's widow's home, and an underwater ballet. We're invited to tour the space before taking our seats, allowing us to ponder memoirs written on the walls and a set of paintings by the cast inspired by a painting described in Moby Dick as "a boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly."
Music Director Phoebe Schaub and the cast wrap the 70-minute ethereal experience of love, loss, and hauntings in beautiful songs, with cast members adding accompaniment with guitars, accordian, and clarinet.
Some of the scenarios are suitably dark, but there's a playful, joyous commitment from the cast (Schaub, Emily Johnson, Joe Wozniak, Sean Lally, Robert Carlton, Amy Frear and Laura Michelle Edoff) that emphasizes dreams' adventurous and spiritual aspects. They've always been in us and we've never fully understood how or why they happen; like death, and life, dreams are a constant mystery.
At the end, I wondered, "Did I experience this or dream it?" Deep Blue Sleep is real, so . . . both.
