Photo by Pat Padua.A woman, cradling a baby doll, emerges from the wings after a puppet show. “That was DISGUSTING! And in front of my BABY!” The Pointless Theatre Company‘s Super Spectacular Dada Adventures of Hugo Ball comes with its own critics, blindly pro and dismissively con. In fact, it comes with practically everything, and an irreverence for same. It’s vulgar, absurd and, finally, celebratory.
In short, I had a great time.
The evening is billed as a puppet show, and the puppets come in all forms and sizes: commercial hand puppets, grotesque masks, a beautiful shadow puppet show depicting the life and death of St. Cecilia and the abstract tin-man detritus of the titular Ball. But for nearly all of this anarchic performance, the actors controlling the puppets are visible, and it is the performers’ unstoppable exuberance that dominate the show — and what make it so much fun.
One of the founders of Dada, Hugo Ball may be the only artist whose work has been performed by both David Byrne (the lyrics to “I Zimbra” are adapated from Ball’s) and Marie Osmond (who recited his poem “Karawane” on a Ripley’s Believe it or Not TV special). That breadth of influence, both radical and populist, shows the kind of inclusive spirit that raises The Pointless Theatre Company’s work above the mere shock value and IN YO FACE-ness that one might understandably expect from Capital Fringe.
If the action is at times relentless, among the sacred cows it slaughters one remains respectfully free range: pacing. Frenzied chaos is peppered with moments of reflection, if only long enough for the actors and the audience to catch their breath and realize that in silliness there is seriousness (Dada was, after all, a response to the Great War), and that too much seriousness is just silly. If this sounds like an hour of sheer zaniness, it is, and in the wrong hands that can become precious and boring. But PTC gets the tone just right, focused but flowing, outrageous without the smug self-consciousness of camp.
“The Birth of Dada” is depicted in a show-within-the-show, framed by larger-than life legs which transform the stage to the birth canal itself: a metaphor for the theatre and all to which she gives birth. The PTC says this is “a show about Dada but not Dada, a show that honors the past by rejecting the past.” The past it rejects is a past of nihilism. The Super Spectacular Adventures of Hugo Ball may now and then flip the bird to its audience, but the final effect is far from alienating — in the end, it embraces life and death and all its contradictions.
There are three remaining performances of The Super Spectacular Dada Adventures of Hugo Ball: July 16th at 5:30 p.m., July 17th at 1 p.m., and July 21st at 8 p.m. At the Studio Theatre’s Mead Theatre, 1501 14th Street NW (enter on P Street).
