Buntport Theater

Show-26

Denver Post- Dirty fable well told, with a dollop of mud

Some might be a bit off-put to read that a theater company is adapting an absurd 1835 Ukrainian short story that scholars have classified as “grotesque realism.”

Don’t be frightened … It’s Buntport!

That means it’ll be inventive, accessible and, yes, even fun.

“The Squabble” typifies all the qualities that make Buntport a singular company. It unearths an obscure source story and transforms it with intelligence and affability, using mind-expanding storytelling techniques along the way.

The Buntport ensemble has told its many original stories on fake ice, suspended above the stage and even upside down …

“The Squabble” is performed in a 12-foot-by-19-foot mud pit.

Yep, 5 cubic yards of wet, sloppy mud. Sure, it’s a gimmick – with a purpose. Just hearing the players trudge through their trough creates sounds that add real, visceral pleasure to the tale.

“The Squabble” is based on Nikolai Gogol’s fable, “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.” Our setting is a village called “World Town” – think of it as Ukraine’s “Our Town.”

Gogol wrote bizarre tales, like the one about a nose that detaches itself from a soldier’s face, intent on living an independent life. Here, he gives us villagers who are content to live in what they call “a magnificent puddle.”

World Town, populated with names like Wanda Wickerstickly, is a harmonious place with no theft or acrimony. That is, until a great friendship between two neighbors is torn asunder when one casually calls the other a “goose.” This innocuous epithet builds, like the butterfly effect, into a sad storm of acrimony that draws the whole town into their down and dirty mess.

Bob Boxinoxingworth (Erik Edborg) and Bob Luggalollinstop (Brian Colonna) are opposite halves of a whole. One’s lanky, clean and proper. The other’s rotund, blunt and kind of gross.

Their tale is told in Brechtian style, so our narrator (a well-spoken pig played by Evan Weissman) and other ensemble characters (played by Hannah Duggan and Erin Rollman) watch along with us in plain view with props and costumes.

The mud pit is more than a visual and auditory novelty. But don’t come looking for wrestling. It’s not a playpen, but a character unto itself.

This is not terribly deep terrain (the pit or the story), but it’s always a pleasure to sit back and watch what grows whenever Buntport simply … adds water.

Here we meet endearingly bizarre characters like Duggan’s Monty Python-worthy judge, Alfred Fredfredfredful. We see Wanda dronishly pin dirty rags to clotheslines hung along both rows of seats, furthering the idea that life here is simply impossible to keep clean.

Still, chins are up.

You won’t understand everything Buntport puts before you. (Who ever does?) But when you combine these delightfully feuding neighbors with the players’ whimsical storytelling style and there’s just something very “Fantasticks” about the whole, brief evening.

And fantastic.

-John Moore, May 22, 2009, Denver Post

In the foreground, a bald man with a big beard and a beauty mark on his forehead is yelling. In the background, a man in a patterned jacket stands in a shallow mud pit, smiling. A clothing line of red long underwear hangs behind.

Blogspot.com- CULTURAMA: Buntport’s ‘Swabble’: Tale of enmity triggers laughs

Denver’s Buntport Theater produces interesting, entertaining work. That may sound simple, but it’s an objective few artists or arts groups ever achieve. They achieve it again with the final play of their eighth season, “The Squabble,” with an unmistakable and unstale Buntportian approach. If you want to enjoy yourself at the theater, this is the one you should be attending.

Here are more remarkable facts about Buntport. They do good work consistently. They are without pretense. They are committed to working here. They work collaboratively.

They are a little tiny Utopian island for me, really, floating in a sea of self-indulgence, bad choices and egomaniacal hobbyism. Which is why I am so biased in their favor. Caveat lector.

The creative sextet – Erik Edborg, Brian Colonna, Evan Weissman, Hannah Duggan, Erin Rollman, and SamAnTha Schmitz – have produced 26 shows together to date, by their count. They have staged unusual fare such as “Kafka on Ice,” Moby Dick Unread,” and “The Odyssey: A Walking Tour.” You could say it’s a little gimmicky – or you could say it’s no-holds-barred. The group is unafraid and unashamed to use whatever techniques help them reach the audience.

The physical setup for “The Squabble” resembles nothing so much as the ring for a messy wrestling match. It’s a rectangular box containing several cubic yards of mud. The ensemble (save for SamAnTha, who handles the offstage functions) treads through the muck, acting out an adaptation of the source material, a short story by Gogol.

The mud is an obvious metaphor for the conflict the protagonists, here named Bob Boxinoxingworth (Edborg) and Bob Luggalollinstop (Colonna), find themselves, er, mired in. It also gives the troupe plenty of dirty laundry to hang out on the clothesline framework that lines the perimeter of the action and extends up into the seats.

It reflects the identifying imagery that places the story in a jerkwater town in Imperial Russia – a “lake” that is a Main Street puddle, a town that’s proud of the evenness of its roofline, and a populace of supercilious idiots that are conscientious mainly of the freshness of their breaths.

Rising from this background like cardboard cutouts are the two Bobs, who share pedantic obsessions and spasms of covetousness, and who finally clash over Bob L.’s use of the pejorative term “goose.” Bob B pivots and fidgets himself into a frenzy, while Bob L (Colonna doesn’t take the low road in his fat suit), sways menacingly, to hilarious effect.

The fable of their feud, which ripples outward in effect until the entire village is temporarily consumed by it, is narrated by a rather well-spoken pig (Weissman) who is clever enough to both make witty observations and avoid being turned into sausage. Weissman’s turn as the identically-named but one-eyed simpleton Bob Boxinoxingworth is equally pleasing.

Rollman plays out an unrequited romance with herself. She’s both the contentious, ever-ironing Wanda Wickerstickly and the chief of police, Peter Apropopanoosh, complete with Pythonesque walk and accent, that Wanda seems to favor . . . when she’s not shrieking the overture to “Carmen” (everyone seems to have his or her classic theme, which murmurs out of their mouths add odd times). Duggan has cartoony fun with the characters of town nudnik Tony Tumblestumpington and magistrate Alfred Fredfredfredful.

Anyone who might object to wacky and surreal nature of the proceedings doesn’t know how to take a spat with a grain of salt. The former friends spurn reconciliation, and their bickering moves into the realm of actual litigation. Anyone familiar with the world of legal machinations will recognize how that kind of thing throws even the best-intentioned lust of vengeance into a flaccid torpor.

The bickering ossifies into a dimly remembered grudge. The search for legal satisfaction becomes a quasi-religious hope for deliverance. The rain keeps falling; the town rots away in the mud.

That Buntport can make us laugh so heartily while keeping the edge of melancholy keen keeps the larger perspective about childish behavior with us. Seeing “The Squabble” won’t solve the world’s problems, but it sure casts a fresh light on our roles in perpetuating them.

-Brad Weismann, May 26, 2009, bradweismann.blogspot.com

In the foreground, a large bald man with a big beard and beauty mark on his forehead stares out. Behind him, a man in a colorful jacket stands in a shallow mud pit with a laundry line of red long johns behind him.

ColoradoDrama.com- The Squabble

Finding the humor in such behavior comes naturally to Russia’s impressive stable of scribes, but its basis is not always apparent to outsiders, as we so often see in angst-ridden, hand-wringing productions of Chekhov. But the creative font of theatrical talent that calls itself Buntport Theatre has no such difficulties in mining the comic and, at times, absurd from the Nikolai Gogol tale they have adapted into a barnyard allegory.The Russian temperament is as enigmatic as the country from which it arises, an unpredictable roller coaster of joy and melancholy, charity and self-interest, that somehow provides the temerity to see its hardy stock through the harshest winters with a ferocity that is willing ultimately to destroy its own resources to outlast the likes of Napoleon and Hitler.

Smack dab in the middle of the company’s flexible space sits approximately 500 square feet of mud held in check by a sturdy frame of two-by-eights – within which most of the action takes place, with the actors wearing rubber boots to navigate the slop – which along with clotheslines and picket fences that demarcate settings, serves as two abodes, surrounding yards, a courtroom, and the town square.

“Wallowing in the mire” and “airing dirty laundry” are two metaphors that come to literal fruition as the plot unfolds: two good friends start feuding for the slimmest of reasons and refuse to forgive each other, even as death approaches.

As always, the company’s characterizations are a hoot, beginning with the main adversaries: Erik Edborg as the well-mannered but easily offended, willowy Bob Boxinoxingworth and Brian Colonna as the ill-bred and blunt, torpid Bob Luggalollinstop. The intriguing question of how these fellows ever got to be friends in the first place is quickly marginalized as we watch Bob B and Bob L project their worst fears on each other.

The Bobs are enabled in their maledictions and reprehensible behavior by Wanda Wickerstickly, a delightfully eccentric and abrasive Erin Rollman, who encourages Bob L and infuriates Bob B. Rollman then turns state’s witness, reappearing as Peter Apropopanoosh, who along with Hannah Duggan’s equitable Alfred Fredfredfredful, the local judge and owner of the town’s largest house, attempt to leverage the law to ameliorate the situation.

Duggan’s alter ego, the delightful simpleton Tony Tumblestumpington, is the harmless, homeless flip side of the judge, who spreads her requests for evening shelter relatively equally between the Bobs. Evan Weissman, as Pig and as One-eyed Bob B stands inside and outside the story, mocking the sad state of affairs to which he is both a partner and an observer.

In the program, the company notes that Gogol’s unique blend of humor and fun resonates with their own work, which is certainly evident in the production. There is one other striking similarity to many of Buntport’s dramas or allegories: the lack of catharsis. In comedy, a series of good laughs is sufficient to provide a transformational catalyst, but The Squabble is not a comedy in structure or tone. It could be argued that this was Gogel’s intention – to let the unresolved issues fester without tragedy or redemption – and perhaps the Russian temperament finds succor in such a point-of-view, but this side of the Cyrillic alphabet, an emotional Rosetta stone is required.

-Bob Bows, May 22, 2009, ColoradoDrama.com

Westword- Gogol is a no-go at Buntport

Partway through The Squabble, I did something I’ve never done before in all my years of faithful and happy attendance at Buntport: I glanced at my watch to see how much longer we had to go.


Reading Gogol takes an imaginative effort: You have to try to transport yourself into his time and place, guess at the manners, politics and culture he’s mocking and adjust to his humor. (Someone once said that reading literature in translation is like making love through a blanket; I think this is particularly true of jokes.) Instead, Buntport has transported the action to some fictive and unnamed place that feels as if it’s halfway between the United States and nineteenth-century Europe. The Ivans have become Bob Boxinoxingworth and Bob Luggalollinstop; narration is provided in part by the former’s pig. But this effort only occasionally captures the flavor of the original, and the updated humor that the company’s inserted – the names, for example; jokes about mints and bad breath substituted for observations about snuff – aren’t that funny. In a concept that could have been inspired, all the action takes place in a huge trough of real mud – Buntport’s version of Gogol’s “truly magnificent puddle” – on which the actors tromp, shove each other and sometimes skid. They wipe their boots continually on squares of cloth, which then get pinned onto moving clotheslines. You can see what the company is going for: a representation of the mean, mud-bound spirit of the little town where pigs and chickens wander the streets, and also of the mud-wrestling between the protagonists. But though the mud provides some good bits of business, particularly for the fastidious Boxinoxingworth, it’s not really integrated with the action. Nor is your very natural desire to see everyone finally scrambling and wrestling in it ever satisfied. Even though there’s no mud fight in the original story and it would be hell on costumes, why provide such a tempting, squishy mess if you’re not going to go all the way?Based on Nikolai Gogol’s “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” The Squabble tells the story of two neighbors in a Ukrainian village who begin as inseparable companions and become deadly enemies over a meaningless epithet flung by one at the other. The original is grotesque, odd and almost surreal, poking fun at rural society, legalism, bureaucracy and human nature. There’s a nod to Romanticism, including a narrator who apologizes periodically for not being more poetic, and the characters are broadly and absurdly sketched.

Erik Edborg and Brian Colonna certainly go all the way in the main roles. These two actors create characters that are fully articulated and insanely funny. Colonna, hugely padded, is a man almost immobilized by his own girth, but makes up for it with a booming voice and an almost desperate air of authority. (Colonna usually gives his characters high, heady voices, so this is an interesting change.) And I can safely say you’ll never see anyone in life or again on stage who even faintly resembles Edborg’s Bob Boxinoxingworth. Wearing a girlish curly wig and absurdly decorated coat, as thin as Luggalollinstop is fat, he’s epicene without being effeminate in any of the usual ways, and his crazed and precise mannerisms are an astonishment. While these two are engaged in their quarrel, you’re riveted.

No one else has created a character this specific, however, and Evan Weissman, Erin Rollman and Hannah Duggan, each playing two roles, end up scuttling around the stage, making faces, using funny voices, gesticulating and wearing silly wigs. Rollman, in particular, seems to be utilizing sketch-comedy characterizations: Both the people she portrays have irritatingly shrill voices; neither speaks as if thinking the words before saying them. The Buntporters are hugely talented, among the most hilarious performers around. Surely they know that nothing kills comedy as fast as trying to be funny.

It’s very possible that Gogol is unstageable; in any case, mixing the nineteenth-century Russian writer with Buntport’s comic sensibilities simply never jells. A satire, the story has no forward momentum – and on stage, as with the original – it grinds to a sad, inevitable halt. Just not soon enough for me.

-Juliet Wittman, May 27, 2009, Westword

A man in a pig nose, red long johns, and a vest looks out, while a woman in red long johns, suspenders, and glasses smiles at him. Behind them a pea green window hangs.

The Squabble

THERE WILL BE MUD

Two fast friends cause chaos in a small village by blowing most things way out of proportion. Based on the Gogol short story. (more…)