Apocalypse with laughs
Woo-hoo! Cockroach’s production of ‘Mr. Burns’ shines despite grim tale
tation Eleven,” the best-selling novel by Emily St. John Mandel, pictures a ragtag group of thespian survivors of the apocalypse carrying on civilization through itinerant stagings of Shakespeare.
Anne Washburn’s apocalyptic vision in “Mr. Burns: A PostElectric Play,” produced by Cockroach Theatre at Art Square, is more realistic. A handful of survivors from some sort of catastrophe maintain their connection to collapsed civilization by remembering a favorite episode of “The Simpsons.” It is at once grim and very funny.
Washburn’s use of a cartoon show to illustrate the reemergence of civilization from a new dark age is wise because cartoon characters are natural archetypes.
In particular the “Cape Feare” episode, in which Bart Simpson and his family are threatened by the relentless killer clown, Sideshow Bob, makes a perfect foil for the classical myths of the eternal struggle between good and evil, life and death, chaos and order.
Like one of the play’s characters confesses, I’ve never seen an episode of the “Simpsons” all the way through, but the perspicuity of Washburn’s theme shines through in director
Troy Heard’s luminous exploration of the meaning of the collapse of all meaning through the remembrance of popular culture.
The play opens with a besieged group of survivors of a recent apocalyptic event distracting themselves by trying to remember the lines from “Cape Feare.”
Startled by the approach of a stranger, they soon are beseeching him if he has somehow, somewhere seen one or another of their missing loved ones. It is a powerful memory of the first days after 9/11.
The second act of the play opens seven years later. The devastation wrought from the original ground zero event, whatever it was, has been overshadowed by the consequent implosion of the nuclear infrastructure.
The group’s retelling of the “Simpsons” episode has now become a structured reenactment. Washburn makes tangible scholarly theories about the evolution of theater from religion and myth.
Our fledgling group of priest/ actors is canonizing the oral retelling into a written text.
Lines from the show remembered by some survivors are judged heretical. Rival groups of survivors have fashioned mythic rituals based on other remembered TV shows.
Washburn suggests that the authenticity of the memory of the “Simpsons” episode has become a life-and-death matter to the group. One character asks, “And what if we pick the wrong religion? We just make God madder and madder every week.” But she also manages to poke some fun at the overseriousness of theater.
In the final act, Heard brilliantly blends elements of Greek tragedy, Kabuki theater and Gilbert and Sullivan in an over-the-top, fully staged musical of the “Cape Feare” episode.
Heard’s overblown staging rings truer to ancient stagings of classical tragedy than more austere modern productions.
Though the bare horror of the group’s memory of the disaster has now become manageable through the “Simpsons” myth, the significance of what happened is actually wellpreserved in their mythic memory.
As one character says, “One family ran from their history to their destiny, the Simpsons.”
Washburn’s challenging script, which transitions from grim realism to musical comedy, is flawlessly performed by the talented ensemble cast. Despite the script’s exaggerated elements, the actors achieve a genuinely cathartic response.
The production team’s light, sound and scenic design is dazzling. Special mention must be made of Steven F. Graver’s eerie Simpsons masks.
“Meaning is everywhere, we get meaning for free whether we like it or not, meaningless entertainment on the other hand is really hard.” Though Washburn delivers a fascinating primer in classical theater and myth, one should see Cockroach’s production of “Mr. Burns” simply for the fun of it.