FronteraFest Long Fringe 2011 Review: Spirits to Enforce at the Blue Theater

A dozen superheroes sit at a bank of telephones in their submarine headquarters. Sounds like the beginning of a really strange joke, right? That's the premise of Mickle Maher's Spirits to Enforce, Capital T Theatre's New Directions production for this year's installment of FronteraFest. It gets weirder, though: the heroes (in street casual dress) are dialing for dollars for their upcoming production of The Tempest. Yeah, that Tempest.

Director Gary Jaffe builds a rumbling, low-frequency story, layering the voices and minimal actions of a talented cast in a near-constant stream of conversation. It echoes the creepy, echoing feel of their submarine locale, but the narrative that emerges is fragmented and inconclusive. The heroes mostly reveal a string of metatheatrical in-jokes drawing connections between superheroes and the spirits that inhabit the island of the Tempest, and nodding at the all-too-familiar pains of arts fundraising and justification of one's own work. Callers seem to be wondering why on earth a bunch of caped crusaders would want to produce a play -- and the answer seems to be the same one most artists give: they're compelled to do so. There are echoes of Shakespeare's play, most clearly in a romance that blossoms across the telephone lines, but ultimately, they don't amount to anything conclusive.

The play feels like a strange choice for a company better known for its searing productions of dark realism, like Tracy Letts' Bug and Killer Joe. Those plays are filled with high emotion, tension, nasty humor, believable if gonzo relationships, and an identifiable conclusion. Maher's piece feels more like watching tiny waves bob and break on a calm night in the ocean -- there's an occasional splash, but certainly no threat of a storm.

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By Georgia Young in Arts & Entertainment on January 24, 2011 3:45 PM 0 Comments

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hartigan

Thanks for your thoughts on Spirits to Enforce, which I saw last Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed. I think you aptly characterize some of the topics the play treats, though its humor features more than "metatheatrical in-jokes." The characters of the play, for instance (a collection of superheroes such as the intoxicator, the untangler, memory lass, and the snow-heavy branch) are each absurdly, ridiculously funny in their own right. As well, I disagree that its narrative structure is "fragmented and inconclusive." There's a clear narrative arch to the drama: while the superheroes are engaged in the seemingly hopeless, soul-draining task of fundraising, scores of evil villains are loosed and running wild across the city. The superheroes and the audience gradually realize this through the course of the phone conversation, and the drama then rushes forward to the actual production of the Tempest itself (narrated after the fact), which the heroes perform before a theater filled with their rampaging nemeses. The ending then brings us full circle, returning the superheroes to their mundane chores/chains at the phone bank. So it's "fragmented" only in the sense that it moves circuitously through an array of wry commentaries on daily life; or, "inconclusive" only in that it suggests an "eternal return" for some archetypal dramatic concerns. But along the way the story is enormously fun and well developed. I encourage people to see it for themselves!

Jenni B.

I haven't seen this show yet (I know, the commenting kiss of death), but I must say I disagree with the idea that a theatre company should do the same kind of play all the time. Yes, I saw and loved Killer Joe and Hunter Gatherers too, but I think Capital T wanting to do something different is a positive, not a negative. I look forward to seeing Spirits and evaluating it on its own terms.

Georgia_Young

Hi Jenni,

That's a fair comment. I didn't mean to imply that Capital T shouldn't try something different, though I do want to point out that their New Directions work (presented during FronteraFest every year) is suggested by the director they select, so it's not surprising that Spirits to Enforce is pretty different from the other work I've seen from this company. I did my best to evaluate the play on its own terms, as you say, but also to note that it's different from this company's usual work because that work is distinctive (and, it should be said, well-known and well-liked).