Carlos Saldaña (center) with, from left to right: Jonathan David Martin, Elena Day, Teresa Spencer, Vanita Kalra. (Teresa Wood)
By DCist contributor Allie Goldstein
In a highly physical mix-tape of a production that combines dance, projection, and even a bit of shadow puppetry, Theater Alliance’s Mnemonic is a heady journey through memories. It never stops moving, but it never really gets anywhere.
The play follows a few interconnected stories: Virgil (Carlos Saldaña), through a series of staccato phone calls, is trying to locate his vanished partner, Alice (Teresa Spencer). Alice is on an odyssey across Eastern Europe to find her father, thought dead until she heard otherwise at her mother’s funeral. Finally, a 5200-year-old preserved iceman is discovered on the border of Austria and Italy, and his story is the subject of intense scientific dispute.
Theater Alliance positions the play, originally devised by the British theater company Complicite and updated for an American audience, as “fiercely relevant” to current events. The play is, “a firm rebuke to the xenophobia and isolationism exhibited by many of our political leaders,” according to Associate Artistic Director Eric Swartz.
That’s a stretch. Though the interlocking plots of Mnemonic are driven by migration, the iceman’s is so ancient it bears little resemblance to modern events, and the story of Alice’s father is presented in such a fragmented manner that you’ll need a mnemonic to remember why you should care. In the end, Virgil and Alice’s arc seems to be more about the frustrations of being ghosted by a lover than anything else.
The story of the iceman, based on the discovery of Ötzi in the Alps in 1991, is more intriguing, tapping into basic human questions about where we come from and how we’re all connected. It also allows Mnemonic a few welcome moments of comic relief, as when a panel of competitive researchers argues over his various interpretations: was he a Neolithic businessman? An early psychiatrist? A misogynist?
The vivid projection design by Patrick Lord paints tattoos and bones on flesh, creates entire scenes from shadow, and casts migrants against vast landscapes. The fact that Saldaña spends a lot of the play naked would be largely gratuitous (or at least a heavy-handed comment on vulnerability) were it not for the stunning lighting by William K. D’Eugenio, which turns the actor’s figure into a statuesque work of art.
Mnemonic’s dance movements, produced by director Colin Hovde with Dody DiSanto, are gorgeous, at times turning the play into a mesmerizing modern dance, its five performers taking on multiple roles and never missing a beat in the transitions. The most captivating sequences externalize the inner thoughts of the characters, such as the image of Alice and a lover falling into bed together again and again—a physical refrain that Virgil can’t stop replaying in his mind.
Such moments of visual wit make for impressive theater. But as a truly relevant condemnation of xenophobia, Mnemonic isn’t something to remember.
Mnemonic runs through April 17 at Theater Alliance, 2020 Shannon Place SE. Buy tickets here.
