EVEN DESPAIR IS MAGICAL ON ICE
A play that is, in fact, what it sounds like: Kafka’s life and work set on ice…
Season 4
MacBlank
MACBETH IS A CURSED PLAY
A mockumentary-style production detailing an attempt at mounting Shakespeare’s cursed play.
Denver Post- Buntport injects Bard’s ‘Titus’ with heads-up (and off) absurdity
Shakespeare certainly wasn’t known for his absurdist wit. He was a funny guy, no doubt, but he left absurdity to be conquered by Ionesco.
But through the creative pathways of others, most of Shakespeare’s plays have been transformed into different beasts from what Shakespeare originally imagined. While many directors and writers think themselves brilliant for taking a play and changing the era and aesthetics (think Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”), more impressive is the Buntport Theater’s “Titus Andronicus! The Musical,” which bends the Bard’s bloodiest play into an irreverent, sometimes-musical journey into the absurd.
“Titus!” is a remount of last year’s production. It takes the familiar story of “Titus” and gives it a smart, “South Park” twist. “Titus!” ingeniously weaves together Shakespeare’s story of tough love and vengeance and the theater company’s penchant for the high- and low-brow laugh line. Amazingly, “Titus” was adapted locally by Buntport, and the inventive adaptation proves that the theater company’s age is illusory – they have talent far beyond their years.
Since “Titus” is no “Hamlet,” a recap of the story is a must. Buntport smartly handles this in a (somewhat) succinct wrapup on the back of its program. Titus, the great Roman general, returns from war where he lost 22 of his sons. Titus’ daughter, Lavinia, is promised to the new Roman emperor, Saturninus, but is in love with his brother, Bassianus. Saturninus rejects her and then takes on a seductive, Andronicus-hating prisoner, Tamora, as his bride.
Tamora’s two sons and her secret boyfriend, Aaron, set out for revenge against Titus and start by killing Bassianus, framing Titus’ sons for the deed, and then cutting off Lavinia’s hands and tongue. Saturninus tells Titus he can have his sons back in exchange for one of the Andronicus’ hands. Titus cuts off his hand, and, in return, receives only the decapitated heads of his sons – an exchange that brings on his insanity.
One of Titus’ few living sons, Lucius, is sent off to gather an army to help the Andronicuses claim Rome’s throne, but before he returns, Tamora comes to Titus with her two sons – disguised – to dig him in an even deeper hole. But Titus sees the lie, kills Tamora’s sons, and bakes their heads into pies, which she later eats.
The Buntport production is put forward as just another day on the road for Professor P.S. McGoldstien and his van of traveling players. The troupe performs out of a van, painted differently on each side to make for varying backdrops. Each actor plays multiple characters, designated by which light bulb is illuminated on the character board. For example, actor Brian Colonna, in a most excellent Oedipal twist, plays both Titus and Lavinia’s lover, Bassianus, depending on which name is lit up.
The music, which takes familiar tunes such as “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” or “Oops! … I Did It Again” and adds knowingly bad lyrics, gives the production an elevated sense of theatricality. Not only is this part-farce, but it’s a musical, with familiar songs and choreography to boot. And the cast pulls off each song with the needed overdramatic flair. When Hannah Duggan’s Lavinia emerges from her appendage “trimming,” she mumbles her way through Britney’s “Oops!” with bloody shirt cuffs and blood spilling out from of her mouth. Later, Colonna’s Titus sings, “I’ll cut off more extremities if that will bring (my sons) back any sooner,” using a sword for a cane, to the tune of “Beyond the Sea.”
“See, ladies and gentleman, we handle violence with delicacy,” says Colonna’s McGoldstien with great comedic timing.
The rest of the cast is equally strong. Duggan, who excels as Lavinia, is wonderful, especially in her tongue-less scenes that rely on her non-verbal skills. Erik Edborg, who takes on Saturninus and Lucius, is best as the puppets that are Tamora’s two sons – and also two of the play’s absolute treasures.
Chiron and Demetrius are Tamora’s sons who trim Lavinia and eventually are cooked into pies by Titus, and they were made into puppets – one a gas can, the other an old-model car radio/ashtray by the Buntport crew. The transformation adds cult-brand humor to the mix. And right when it seems like the laughter is endless, one of the final scenes, where Aaron confesses to his evildoing, lacks flow and sinks the tail end of the production to the dregs of bad writing.
“Titus!” is very un-Shakespearean, but still this irreverent romp is something the Bard would very well adore and, possibly, envy.
-Ricardo Baca, February 19, 2003, Denver Post
Westword- Titus All Rightus!
Buntport’s version of Shakespeare’s forgotten yarn strikes a bloody good note
Titus Andronicus has always bothered Shakespeare scholars, some of whom simply refused to believe that the great man actually wrote the blood-drenched monstrosity. In his famous Tales From Shakespeare, Charles Lamb noted that Titus was “not acknowledged” by the critics whose assessment of dates he used, “nor indeed by any author of credit.” Later thinkers reluctantly acknowledged Shakespeare’s authorship but have suggested that Titus was a rewrite of an older and much worse play. Others, defending the tragedy, pointed out that there are lots of corpses in Hamlet and King Lear, as well as spurious gore, and that Greek tragedy is full of rape, murder and cannibalism. Harold Bloom, on the other hand, believes that the play is an intentional parody, a Shakespearean sendup of rival playwright Christopher Marlowe. In any case, almost nobody stages Titus these days. Audiences are too apt to titter at the forgettable merry-go-round of posturing, declaiming characters, betrayals and counter-betrayals, and the cascade of murders and mutilations.
But the folks at Buntport Theater have figured it out. They’re presenting Titus Andronicus as Titus Andronicus! The Musical. Why has no one ever thought of this before? It means that when Titus is told he can save the lives of two of his sons by chopping off his hand (don’t ask — it wouldn’t make sense even if I gave you more context), we get a stirring masculine trio as he, his brother and another (currently unendangered) son compete for the honor of self-mutilation, complete with stirring choruses and natty little rhythmic steps. “Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along,” says evil Aaron, who has set this all up, “for fear they die before their pardon come.” And when Titus, having killed the wicked Tamora’s wicked sons, makes plans to bake their heads and serve them in pastry to their mother, he flourishes a knife in his remaining hand and musically debates the recipe in a zesty French accent.
This is Titus Andronicus as staged by Professor P.S. Goldstien — aka Brian Colonna — and four actors, out of the back of a van that occupies Buntport Theater’s cavernous and otherwise empty playing area. Each actor plays more than one of Titus‘s several dozen roles, and there’s a helpful placard with pictures, names and lightbulbs that get turned on and off during the action so you can figure out who’s playing whom at any given moment. There’s also a chalkboard to track the corpses. This doesn’t mean you can actually follow the twists and turns of the plot — it’s hard to do that in any production — but it does give you a broad idea of what’s happening, which is all you really need.
The van is tricked out with immense ingenuity. One side is painted like a forest, the other like a building. Canvases slide up and down inside the door, platforms are pulled from the side and back. Periodically, the entire cast gets together to push the vehicle from one place to another. They do this with energy, élan and high good humor, so that a fall or mishap becomes part of the performance. It isn’t just that Buntport’s is an interpretation of an inexplicable piece of our literary inheritance (and for all its lunacy, it is an interpretation). It’s that the approach to the work — the collaboration and improvisation with which it began — is valid theater in itself. You see the way the group has chosen to present a particular speech, but you also see how the actor speaking it stumbled (or strolled) into his interpretation and what he now feels about it. There’s Shakespeare’s text, and there’s also Buntport’s commentary — overt or implied — on that text.
Objects take on a life of their own. In the night scenes, a stuffed owl perches on the van’s rearview mirror. When someone comments that “the leaves are green,” several skeletal umbrellas, their spokes covered with leaves, unfurl. Blood spurts, dribbles and pools. Tamora’s sons, Demetrius and Chiron, are represented by a gasoline can and a car radio; their speech comes courtesy of Erik Edborg, who acts as their puppeteer. Later, the human-flesh pies speak, too.
Buntport Theater is the creation of several graduates of Colorado College — Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, Matt Petraglia and Samantha Schmitz — who create their theater pieces collaboratively. Colonna, Edborg, Duggan and Rollman are the performers in Titus, along with Muni Kulasinghe. You want to see them at work, because this production is clever, inventive, and one of the funniest evenings of theater around. It’s also definitive. Which means you’ll never have to go see Titus Andronicus again.
-Juliet Wittman, February 13, 2003, Westword
Rocky Mountain New- The Bard lightens up in Buntport’s ‘Titus’
In its version of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the six-member troupe twists a tragic tale of revenge and deceit into a manic, melodramatic musical, filled with oodles of fake blood, clever pop-song covers and abundant sarcasm.The Bard is never boring in the hands of the capable Buntport Theater clan.
It’s far from the traditional Titus but tons more fun.
Buntport presents the play as a band of roving performers (known as the Van-O-Players), harking back to the vagabond troupes who traveled the countryside in Shakespeare’s day. The Van-O-Players carry props, costumes, a musician and a player piano in their dilapidated but colorful vehicle — the essentials for making light of one of the Bard’s least-liked works.
Because they’re few in number, each player takes on multiple roles, transitioning from character to character by donning a fake beard, cowboy hat or other silly prop. The group’s musician (the multitalented Muni Kulasinghe) plays such a vast array of characters that he pastes strips of paper to his chest to indicate which personality he’s portraying at any given time. He also tracks the play’s mounting death toll on a small black chalkboard.
The Van-O-Players present an abbreviated adaptation of Titus but stick somewhat closely to the play’s plotline, which details the downfall of a Roman general in a Melrose Place-type fashion.
The Buntport tribe (made up of Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman and their offstage counterparts Matt Petraglia and Samantha Schmitz) have a grand time poking fun at this poorly constructed play.
The groups shrewdly sprinkle songs throughout the scenes to highlight the absurdity of specific characters and situations. The new emperor, for example, celebrates his ascension with ragtime playing in the background, his loyal subjects dancing around him sporting toothy smiles and jazz hands.
A plotting lover sings about seeking revenge for his sweetheart over a cover of ABBA’s Fernando, chatting up murderers while doing the cha-cha.
Even versions of Bobby Darrin’s Beyond the Sea and Britney Spears’ Oops I Did it Again make appearances.
The props also provide comic relief. Two characters are portrayed by hand puppets; one is made of a rusty gas can, and the other is an old car radio with a shoeshine brush serving as a spiky hair covered head.
Blood is bountiful, pouring like a river out of the performer’s guts, mouths, hands, etc. By the end of the play, the actors could easily double as extras for the next Scream sequel.
And the show has a surprisingly high production value, considering that the troupe’s psychedelic van is the set. With scenes painted on its sides, the vehicle serves as a grand palace one minute, a lush, green forest the next.
But gimmicks aside, what makes this spoof succeed is the cast’s commitment. The performers are consistently solid, from Rollman as the devilishly delightful Queen Tamora (who punctuates nearly every scene with a wicked laugh) to Kulasinghe, who sprints between characters with Michael Lewis like speed.
But hurry if you want to see the Bard’s bloodiest play performed Buntport Theater style. The show, postponed by two weeks because of Colonna’s emergency appendectomy, will end its run Sunday.
-Erika Gonzalez, May 17, 2002, Rocky Mountain News
Denver Post- A bloody tragedy turns into a hoot: Buntport’s ‘Titus’ a biting parody
(*Revised from published version with permission*)
“Titus Andronicus” has long been regarded as Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy. Who knew it could also be his funniest comedy?
Buntport Theatre spoofs the Bard with the intelligent and endlessly inventive send-up “Titus Andronicus! The Musical.” The body count (kept on a chalkboard scorecard) tops out at 35 (seven times the number of people in the cast), but the only tragedy here is that the smartypants at the Buntport were forced to shorten their run to just two weekends. Brian Colonna, who plays Titus, underwent an emergency appendectomy just before the April 25 opening, delaying things by two weeks. But he’s back in full flourish, and he’s got scads of killings to make up for in a very short period of time.
The revenge tragedy “Titus” is Shakespeare’s most lampoonable work, but the key to spoofing it successfully is to stay firmly rooted in the text. Several other companies around town are currently taking liberties with Shakespearean models, but none comes close to the level of smart humor and biting parody that Buntport achieves. The Bug, for example, is presenting “Comedy of Errors,” but in acknowledgement of its difficult material, it ill-advisedly goes for broad, desperate stabs at humor that are accomplished only when its actors leap desperately out of character, or bulldoze the fourth wall. It comes across like children’s theater.
The mad geniuses at the Buntport, who adapted and directed the material as a collective, take a more sophisticated yet still-bawdy approach to “Titus,” with brilliant sight gags, silly songs and masterful prop work that has fun with the material while staying true to its lusty spirit. While the Bug’s cast doesn’t even seem to much like the material it is working with, the young Buntport players love theirs so fully they could eat it for lunch like a Chiron pie.
After I saw Buntport’s romp and stomp, I checked out Julie Taymor’s beautifully violent film starring Anthony Hopkins. The approaches could not be more different, but they have two things in common: They are both at times side-splittingly funny, and they both illuminate the text for the audience, the benchmark against which any Shakespearean production is judged.
Titus is a Roman general who has lost 22 sons in battle and upon his return offers the son of the imprisoned Goth queen Tamora as a ritual sacrifice. Titus defers the throne to Saturninus, who promptly weds the revenge-minded Tamora. Her sons rape Titus’ daughter Lavinia, and chop off her hands and tongue. They also murder Saturninus’ brother and frame two of Titus’ surviving sons. When offered his sons’ lives in exchange for a hand, Titus gladly lops his off, but in return is delivered only his sons’ heads. Thought delirious with madness, Titus fashions a tasty revenge: He kills Tamora’s sons Chiron and Demetrius and bakes them into meat pies that Tamora unknowingly eats with ketchup and mustard before meeting her own doom.
The collective has proudly chopped about 50 percent of the text, but still, how to keep the epic straight with a cast of five? The cast has fashioned an inspired cheat sheet. A large board shows the painted faces of all five actors in a row. Below each face are the names of the characters that actor portrays. Each name is accompanied by a pull-string lightbulb that Muni Kulasinghe flicks on and off at breakneck speed. So if you ever get confused, you can instantly see which character each actor is portraying. It’s a hoot to watch.
Buntport presents “Titus” in its otherwise empty warehouse space with only a Club Wagon van for a set. And when that van is a rockin’, someone comes a choppin’.
Colonna is P.S. McGoldstien, leader of the denim-based Van O’ Players minstrels. The van is painted on three sides to represent different settings, and the hole in the roof serves nicely as the pit where Lavinia’s lover meets his doom, complete with blood-smeared windows.
Another hollowed window serves as the opening for some puppet theater scenes that Taymor would love. Erik Edborg is a great puppeteer who plays the brothers Chiron and Demetrius as a ripped-out car radio and a gas can. When they get baked into singing meat pies, the gas spout (snout?) sticks out of the crust. Trust me: It’s funnier than it may sound.
The sight gags are nonstop: In the original, Tamora’s infidelity with Aaron is revealed when she delivers a black baby. Here her baby sports a tiny Chef Boy-ar-dee mustache that matches Aaron’s (Hannah Duggan). When Titus sacrifices his hand, it is smashed off in the van door. When a sword is drawn, it’s an oil dipstick.
And about that music. It’s ridiculous and bossa-nova saucy, like the play itself. It parodies the Carpenters (“Close to You”), the jazz standard “Beyond the Sea,” even Bon Jovi’s awful “Living on a Prayer.”
Just go see it. But if you don’t like it, and your heart grows full with the thirst for revenge, please forget that you heard about it from me.
-John Moore, May 15, 2002, Denver Post
Colorado Daily- Buntport makes laughingstock of Bard with tuneful “Titus Andronicus! The Musical”
Take some Shakespeare. Turn it upside down, inside out, slap it around, shake it like an unopened can of paint, hang it on the wall and make fun of its mamma.
That’s the approach Buntport Theater takes to what it calls “the Bard’s bloodiest play,” “Titus Andronicus.” What results is a crass, sardonic, no-holds-barred gorefest (stuffed with toe-tapping musical numbers) that is one of the funniest experiences you are likely to have on what the evening’s host refers to as “a flight on that big bird called theatre – with an R, E, of course.”
The show takes place in Buntport’s bare-walled performance space, occupied only by a massive Club Wagon XLT van which serves as the surprisingly versatile set, a player piano and tape deck, and a light-bulb-studded tote board, the last of which helps us keep track of who’s playing whom in each scene. A drop-dead-funny cast of five, who present themselves as the traveling “Professor P.S. McGoldstien Van-O-Players,” portray the near-infinitude of characters in “Titus.” They aid their cause with the help of a stripped-down text crammed with cheesy gags, clever no-budget costumes and props, and a flock of quick-change costume pieces that help to keep the players straight – barely.
A summary of the play’s gruesome and complex plot, thought to be Shakespeare’s first effort at tragedy, would eat up too much space. Besides, Buntport’s hilarious program captures its absurdities nicely. Its mélange of high-flown eloquence, revenge, murder, rape, insanity, dismemberment, and cannibalism has rendered it unproduceable by all but the hardiest and most grimly insightful of directors. Of course, this makes it perfect fodder for parody.
Each performer takes on a handful of roles with relish – and a great deal of ketchup, which is splattered about profusely as the bloodshed swells (updated as expirations progress on a handy “Death Toll” chalkboard). Brian Colonna, a bundle of energy despite undergoing an emergency appendectomy only days before the opening, sets the tone with joyful, manic bombast as Titus, and with wimpy delicacy as the hapless suitor Bassanius. Erik Edborg scores as a wheezy emperor, Titus’ wistfully dense would-be-hero son Lucius, and as the voices and hands powering the evil brothers Chiron and Demetrius, who are puppets incarnated from a car radio and a gas can, respectively.
Droll Erin Rollman handles her manifold acting duties with style and wit, especially as Titus’s befuddled brother Marcus, and as Titus’s nemesis, the Goth queen Tamora. Hannah Duggan is brilliantly funny, doubling as the evil Aaron the Moor, complete with Snidely Whiplash moustache, and as Titus’s doomed daughter Lavinia, who, lopped of tongue and hands, she still gamely serves as a mute and melancholy Ann Miller. Tasteless? Sure. Funny? You bet.
A new and welcome Buntport participant is gangly Muni Kulasinghe, who runs the musical portion of the show and fills in as any number of incidental characters whose demise is imminent. His profusion of idiotic impersonations adds immeasurably to the show’s bounty of belly laughs. Classical music lovers will find his baleful plucking of the “Dies Irae” on mandolin a howl. Kudos also to the troupe’s often-overlooked backstage members, Matt Petraglia and SamAnTha Schmitz, who keep the comic havoc flowing.
“Titus” gleefully mocks the Bard and all who have made him into the playhouse’s sacred beast. In an area where “serious,” big-budget productions draw crowds and media attention, Buntport proves that entertaining theater (or theatre) can be composed of nothing more than a minimum of stage effects, a powerful collection of talent, and an abundance of imagination. “Titus – The Musical” deserves packed houses for the remainder of its run.
-Brad Weismann, May 14, 2002, Colorado Daily