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Friday, July 22, 2005
Will Power at NBAF
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. ”Flow.” Through Saturday.
He looks like he’s 7 feet tall, and uses his willowy physique and relentless energy to build a nimble and expressive style. But the thing that seems to inform the soul of hip-hop actor Will Power, who collects artistic labels like some people do plastic wristbands, is his ability to dispatch his community’s stories with passion and flavor.
Maybe this dynamic bard from the ’hood invents the characters who inhabit his one-man show, “Flow,â€? which continues tonight as part of the National Black Arts Festival. Or maybe he taps them from real life. What’s amazing is the way his urban prophets appear to be organically synthesized from his collective experiences — his hopes, his dreams, his nightmares.
With a soundscape performed live by turntable artist DJ Reborn, “Flow� celebrates the African-American oral tradition by describing a parade of contemporary urban griots who the narrator encounters on his inner-city rambles.
There’s ”free-styleâ€? girl rapper Sweet Pea, who carries on a friendly argument with an ”old-school” rhymer about their generational divide. A grocery bagger who moonlights as a preacher and incites the wrath of his Baptist brethren. A drunkard named Breeze who entertains the crowd with tales of “Fred the Cockroach.â€? And so on.
Along the way, Power, who dances barefoot in a circle of sand, manages to rhyme ”Betty” with “spaghettiâ€? and introduces us to a seagull named Aquanetta. (”Unlike the other gulls, she lets you pettah.”)
Because Power’s language rarely gets more explicit than that, the performance feels appropriate for all ages.
Perhaps the only thing unsettling about “Flowâ€? is Power’s darkly comic vision. (Even his roaches have angst.) Like the Homeric poets who preceded him, Power’s primary preoccupations are death and heroism. One by one, his naive philosophers are slowly obliterated. How sad to be the last one standing.
THE 411: “Flow.� $22.50-$25. 8 p.m. July 22-23. 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000. www.nbaf.org.
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Magic, deception and the Chinese conjuror
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The Mystery of Chung Ling Soo.” At 7 Stages though July 29.
In the early 1900s, Chung Ling Soo, the “Marvelous Chinese Conjuror,” was as popular a vaudevillian as his friend Harry Houdini. He swallowed fire, created optical magic —- and rarely uttered a word.
But on an infamous London night in 1918, he was shot to death while trying to execute one of his signature feats, “Defying the Bullets.” As blood splattered the stage, the exotic-looking Asian said: “My God, bring down the curtain. Something has happened.”
Strangely enough, his English was perfect.
As it turned out, Chung Ling Soo wasn’t from China. He was a New Yorker named William Ellsworth Robinson, who’d led a secret double life for years. His dazzling deception, and the mysterious circumstances of his death, sparked a scandal and a mystique that endures to this day.
Witness Jim Steinmeyer’s new biography, “The Glorious Deception,” and the visually evocative play “The Mystery of Chung Ling Soo,” by New York’s Flying Carpet Theatre, which has touched down at 7 Stages before departing for Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.
Created by Amy Boyce and former Atlantan Adam Koplan, the chamber-size whodunit is a theatrical bonbon that pays loving homage to the art of magic, the murder-mystery genre and the backstage tradition of back-stabbing and fanny-grabbing. Was Chung Ling Soo’s death an accident, a crime of passion or the result of some undetected motive?
From the get-go, Robinson (Matthew Seidman) uses his deadpan demeanor and faintly quivering brow to signal that there’s a little “Twilight Zone” action going on here. Like his famous historical counterpart Chung Ling Soo, James Chen barely murmurs a syllable, but his fluid movement and inscrutable gaze make him the mesmerizing focal point of the show-within-a-show. Why, Chung Ling Soo, you’re as delicate and pretty as a China teacup.
But not all is perfect in this tingly tale, which is virtually humorless and turgid at times. The piece —- which unspools as a true-crime flashback replete with reporters, screaming headlines and voice-overs —- has the trajectory of a bullet speeding backward. (Or maybe it’s a ricocheting rickshaw.)
Still, there’s nothing scattershot about its ethereal choreography and elegant, low-tech aesthetic. (Sets and lighting are by James H. Aitken; costumes by Kim Gill.)
Spinning parasols become the wheels of a carriage drawn by a human-horse. Fabric drops to the floor with the frisson of a burlesque number. And thanks to composer Michael McQuilken, who manipulates recorded samples and live keyboards into a continuous sound loop, the players dance through time and space like actors in a silent film.
Deploying sleight of hand and conjuring tricks such as the master himself might’ve used, Flying Carpet reconstructs the dual life and disturbing disappearance of Chung Ling Soo. But the strange story of William Ellsworth Robinson doesn’t stop when the bullet strikes.
In fact, that’s when the fun begins.
THE VERDICT: A pretty puzzlement.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Sunday. Through July 29. $15-$20. Flying Carpet Theatre, 7 Stages, Back Stage, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-523-7647, www.7stages.org.
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