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April 10, 2009
Studies is a disappointment
The plot seems just a vehicle to carry the special lighting effects.
BAILA LAZARUS
I really had high hopes for Studies in Motion. It looked so interesting, got such rave reviews, had Josh Epstein (who rarely disappoints) in the lineup and it was showing at the Vancouver Playhouse, where I have never seen a bad play. However, these four elements, even along with some brilliant special effects, were not enough to keeping me from leaving before the end.
About midway through the second act, I turned to my friend and said, "OK, I'm ready to leave if you are."
"Oh, thank God!" she replied, without a nanosecond of hesitation.
Like me, she was fed up with a convoluted and confusing script, bland dialogue and a bizarre mix of theatrical genres. If you've ever struggled through a David Lynch film (Mulholland Dr. springs to mind) or painfully watched Wim Wenders' directors cut of Until the End of the World (270 excruciating minutes), you'll understand the strain it took to remain in our seats after the fun stuff (which mostly takes place in the first half of the play) was over.
What had started out as an amazing treatment of the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge deteriorated into a below-mediocre play that held no interest. In fact, quite a few seats were left empty after the intermission, a sign that the performance was not fulfilling expectations.
Part of the reason for this is that the play was chosen because it would work well as a vehicle for a unique lighting technique, rather than because it stood on its own merits for its writing. As the playbill says, the Electric Company was approached by Robert Gardiner, a designer and professor at the University of British Columbia's department of theatre, film and creative writing, with the idea of using video projectors as a lighting source for the stage. They chose Studies in Motion for the experiment.
The play is based on the work of Muybridge, whose photographic essays in the second half of the 19th century were used in scientific studies of animals in motion. For example, through an iconic series of horses running and jumping, one could determine when a horse has all four hooves on the ground and when not. To be honest, I was intrigued by this. Having a background in science and being a photographer, I was interested in the marriage of the two at such an early stage in the development of photography. And Muybridge's passion for his work (if portrayed accurately) is certainly something to respect.
In the play, when he is accused of making lascivious images because he has started a series of nude studies of both men and women, he defends himself by saying he is not interested in the flesh; it simply allows him to better capture the actions in a photograph. If he could, he would strip away the flesh in order to see the muscle and strip away the muscle in order to see the skeleton.
"I would strip the skeleton away if I could see the unencumbered essence of an action," he concludes.
The plot, around which this period of Muybridge's life is based, is a simple one: an elderly photographer marries a young girl, who gets pregnant after a fling with a theatre reviewer. The elderly photographer shoots the theatre reviewer with a gun and gives the child up for adoption. The elderly photographer becomes grumpy, obsessed and refuses to acknowledge he has a son until 10 years later, when another young girl comes along.
This plot is spread throughout the play in flashbacks – sometimes simply acted out by the players, sometimes narrated by them in an incredibly annoying and confusing style. Eventually, the flashbacks of the past catch up with the present, and the climax is reached.
In the first half, brilliant uses of lighting, projections and scrims captured the focus of Muybridge's life. (Scrims are pieces of material dropped from the ceiling like a curtain. When lit from the front, they appear as a solid piece of fabric. When lit from the rear, they become semi transparent, creating a silhouette effect.)
There is a particularly stunning effect at one point when Andrew Wheeler (playing Muybridge) walks slowly across the stage. Flashes go off one by one at the back of the stage as he passes and in the instant that each flash illuminates Muybridge, a photo pops up on a scrim at the front of the stage showing the resulting image.
Most of these lighting and scrim effects take place in the first half of the play and, for my money, that's what the ticket is for. A friend I ran into at intermission put it well when he said, "The plot is just a vehicle to carry the effects."
While I don't want to make assumptions, it would seem that the Electric Company itself is hedging its bets when it comes to this production, as they are offering a substantial reduction to see the play: get a hold of a used ticket or playbill, go with a guest who buys a ticket, and you can get in for free.
Studies in Motion runs at the Vancouver Playhouse until April 18. Visit www.vancouverplayhouse.com for information.
Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, painter and photographer. Her work can be seen at www.orchiddesigns.net.
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