Re:Psyche at the Blue Theater

Collaborative theater (that is to say, theater that starts with no concrete script and relies upon a slew of people creating from the ground up) can be such a mess. The reality behind such free-form movement of ideas is often that no one is stepping on, over, or past toes to choreograph those ideas into something synchronized and fluid.

Marie Brown, who reprises her role as director of this new incarnation of the wildly popular Psyche Project, is not one of those no-ones.

There's a load of information about the project, its history, and the sensibilities behind it already studding the Intarwebz. In brief it is, like most quality adaptations, both a modernization of and a response to its source material. What happens: Basically the legend of Cupid and Psyche. Only there's Wii Tennis, Chubby Hubby ice cream, tap-dancing, and a wealth of of other contemporary references and conventions in this pop culture-soaked pastiche of responses to the central themes of the myth.

Re:Psyche runs through July 17th at The Blue Theater.

It's relevant, not disorienting and weird.

It's striking how well The Psyche Project actually works and how appealing it is despite the fact that multiple hands formed it. This is bright, young imagination at work, a fierce scribbling of vibrant colors within thin, well-considered lines drawn throughout lengthy workshop processes. Many of the lesser ideas in previous versions of the show have been sloughed, making the show a much more agile, sleeker creature that holds burbling conversations with itself and the audience (sometimes literally). It's a little sexy, more-than-a-little cynical (read: realistic), frank, and obviously created and performed by a bunch of sensitive people who're a bit fucked up in the heart.

It's awesome in an apple-a-day way. To be blunt, young theater in this town isn't really concerned with audiences that want assuaging drivel and hand-holding through this difficult time. Leave that to old people who've given up. We want to translate and converse, understand and be confused, to challenge, be challenged, and excavate in unison (or discord) with our audiences. At the helm of this production are two of the most eloquent orators in this community. Verity Branco and Harrison Butler as the play's mythical pair are, to put it simply, embarrassingly talented. Along with Tom Truss, who stammers and strides across the stage as an opening-closing wound of an Aphrodite, they offer the sort of performance this town needs more of: dense, reactive, implosive, and piercing. Most importantly, through everything else, they are glaringly and potently human.

And that's what, at the core, myth is all about anyway.

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