The Prague Fringe Festival: Day 3 (May 24)

Crossed Wires For some reason, the Iris Theatre Company from Canada decided that a program listing their benefactors was more important than identifying themselves. This is unfortunate, as there are a few performers in the troupe worth singling out. Iris Theatre's piece, Crossed Wires, is inspired by the e.e. cummings poem "somewhere I have travelled, gladly beyond," which contains one of cummings' finest lines, "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands." Like the poem, there is a beauty and fragility to this little symbolist play, which, only occasionally, strikes one as perhaps a bit simplistic. However, there is no denying the great sincerity that the cast brings to the piece, and there are two performances (not counting the two fine musicians, who also play a short set in the Rubín bar before the curtain) that deserve special notice. The piece itself follows a new being, a young woman, as she makes her way through the world acquiring (and mastering) her senses. Through her encounters with other humans and creatures, she will come to understand her inherent uniqueness (a friend pointed out afterward that there are echoes of de Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince in Crossed Wires, which is apt). One of these humans, a tortured figure with her hands practically welded to her mouth to keep from speaking, will teach the young woman language. This keeper of the tongue is powerfully played by a young actor who brings a startling physicality to the part. But it's finally the actor playing the young woman herself, the radiant center of this piece, who commands and deserves attention. She skillfully builds her character's approach to full consciousness "petal by petal," as cummings would say. She's an actor who is both vocally and physically assured, and who is always wholly present onstage - luminously so. Stealing again from cummings, there is a "voice" in her "eyes." A Studio Rubín  

This Still Night Another Canadian troupe, In the Name Of…Theatre Creations, isn't as successful with their piece, This Still Night. While the subject matter is worthy - a young lesbian leading a life in a small, conservative town - the execution is far too melodramatic. The playwright, Meg Gennings, strives to write in a poetic voice, but the result is something like small talk magnified. Plus, her final scene rings absolutely false. The piece is further hampered by Ms. Gennings and Michael F. Bergmann's direction, which never attempts to dislodge the piece's actors from a very one-note delivery that borders at times on declamation. The company and their play are very well-meaning, but that isn't enough when in competition for people's attention in a weeklong festival. A Studio Rubín  

The Crying Cherry Circus Treurdier, consisting of Dutchmen Maarten Heijman and Ian Bok, is the male equivalent to the female Canarsie Suite duo: They are two performers with energy to burn, who have perfected their own brand of precision slapstick. Their Crying Cherry, justly given an award at the Amsterdam Fringe, is a wild retelling of an Asian tale concerning two separated brothers, who will meet years later as samurai/martial art rivals. From their violent inception (their foot-bound mother was ravished) to their bloody final encounter, the entire tale is performed with a full Chinese menu of cartoon Asian gibberish. All very un-PC, though the two Asian gentlemen sitting opposite of me were crying with laughter - as well they should be, as The Crying Cherry is uproarious. Mr. Heijman and Mr. Bok take the stage like two demented children's theater performers, filling a full hour with an inexhaustible supply of jokes, pratfalls, song, music, multiple characters, a mad tea party and hand-puppetry, where their hands are the puppets. The story is, of course, a riff on the standard Asian martial arts films, something the two are undoubtedly students of, as they must also be of actual martial arts training, which ballasts their movement. It's a circus of two in a very confined space, and well worth trying to join. A Studio Rubín

Steffen Silvis can be reached at
ssilvis@praguepost.com