Fringe, Reviewed: Fando y Lis
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.
"...the cast are up to the absurdity of the play, pinballing like schizophrenics..."
[ theater ]
Fando y Lis, by Fernando Arrabal, new translation by Emily Schuman
Attended: Sat., Sept. 20, 2 p.m., Shubin Theatre; closes Sept. 22
Fando carts his crippled bride Lis through a barren nowhere-land to find happiness in the city of Tar. As the absurd becomes a reality, they confront us with their lyrical, violent, and perilous love.
WE THINK:
Emily Schuman is director, actor, set designer, translator and adapter and dramaturge of this production of Arrabal’s 1955 classic. And every decision she has made is proof of how well she possesses the work, and how willingly she has allowed it to possess her. The play begins with Fando (Harry Watermeier) carrying the crippled Lis (Schuman) across his back, staring into the audience while delivering a discourse on violence from Arrabal’s good friend Alejandro Jodorowsky: “There is no violence. The explosion of galaxies is violent. A comet falling on Jupiter making seven big holes is violent. The birth of a child is very violent…the circulation of blood, the heart beating, all this is violent. But there are two types of violence: creative and destructive. We, we are creative.”
What follows is the journey to Tar, a city Fando and Lis both know they will never reach, though “we will try.” Along the way, a one legged mannequin in rags will occasionally stand in for Lis, they torture each other psychologically and physically (the violence climaxes in a scene the audience has a right to discover for itself), they encounter a laff-riot trio of fellow travelers, have dream sequences, and shed many tears. Schuman’s Lis is both wretched and defiant, and the cast are up to the absurdity of the play, pinballing like schizophrenics from rage to humor to sorrow to glee and back again.
On the small stage of the Shubin Theatre, Schuman has brilliantly constructed a play of circles. The travelers move around in a circle, complaining that the journey to Tar always lands them back where they started, they argue fiercely round and round about nonsense and the play concludes as it began. It’s all very brief, taking less than an hour, which is part of the “meaning” (tread lightly when applying that word to this play) itself. For such are our lives, a brief outburst of joy and savagery, an incomprehensible journey, senseless when observed. The stakes? Nothing. Everything.
