7 (x1) Samurai @ Fringe

Hey, David Gaines! It's not you, Baby. It's me.

Gaines is the gifted mime and movement artist who reduces Akira Kurosawa's epic 1954 masterpiece The Seven Samurai to 45 minutes and a cast of one in 7 (x1) Samurai. He is by any standard an estimable man with a list of credits longer than Toshiro Mifune's katana. He evokes distinct characters using only his body and his voice (though he utters but a single English word, preferring the Samurai tongue of grunts and growls) and his recounting of the story of the first, and probably still greatest, "assembling a team of roughnecks to perform an impossible mission" movie is lucid and efficient.

No small thing, this. It requires keen powers of observation. Unflagging stamina. Laserlike precision. Split-second timing. Etc.

Yawn.

I just don't get it.

To be fair, the house I saw 7 (x1) Samuari in was packed to the gills, laughed throughout the performance, and gave Gaines a standing ovation when it was over. So your mileage may vary. But to me, turning a 203-minute epic adventure film into a 45-minute nonverbal one-man comedy show, while an impressive feat of something or other, seems kind of pointless, like learning to play the violin with your teeth. (Totally worth doing if you don't have hands.) If this were 10 minutes long, I'd love it 10 times as much.