Journal
chelfitsch: Five Days in March Jan 29, 2009
by Jessica
On a bare stage, the actors speak and move with the utmost casualness. I thought I was going to see a play, or a dance-theater work, instead 7 actors forgot they were in a theater and simply told me about some events in their lives that happened to coincide with the start of the war.
Except: the story was completely deconstructed. We kept jumping slightly forward, slightly backward in the timeline of events. Just as you think you’ve figured out each character’s role in the events, they seem to shift; maybe it was him in the hotel, not that other guy. I initially couldn’t help but be completely engaged in the story. I felt a driving need to figure it all out.
And then there was the movement. At first you don’t even notice the choreography. The man on stage is simply talking, gesturing as any of us would. But there’s something off kilter, it’s not the right gesture. It’s not even quite a gesture. An almost-gesture. Repeated. Over and over and over. And then another. This is a group of people with a very strange sense of equilibrium.
In the end, the story was of little import to me. It was the movement that made each character compelling, occasionally off-putting, and always endearingly eccentric.
-Keely Isaak Meehan