Disaster flick spoof gets even
It took a year longer to get here than planned, but this disaster has been well worth waiting for. Mugwumpin’s “Blockbuster Season,” a comically pointed take on the apocalyptic movie genre — which was supposed to be the centerpiece of the company’s 10th anniversary last September (delayed by an inopportune illness) — opened Sunday, Sept. 27, at co-producer Intersection for the Arts. It’s a fast, compact, testosteronefueled and -foolish delight.
Fire, flood, tornadoes, volcano, earthquake — just about every summer blockbuster disaster-flick plot point you could desire destroys the rough-hewn model city onstage in the first few minutes. Even a URM (Unidentified Reptilian Monster) rising from the sea. Not to mention the survivors — stunned, helpful or in brutal competition — the in-your-face TV reporters and the clueless, opportunistic leaders, trying to ride out and take advantage of the storm.
In Mugwumpin’s characteristic style, “Blockbuster” is a collaboratively devised, nonlinear piece of theater. It was conceived by its performers, co-founders Christopher W. White and Joe Estlack, with director Susannah Martin and developed with the designers and others. There is no story, per se, and the dramatic arc is more intuited than defined. But as staged by Martin and choreographer Natalie Greene, it grabs and holds your attention.
The action plays out onstage and on a large screen, with a deadpan Melusina Gomez (who also steps in as a character at times) handling the cameras (one of which is a cell phone) for Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky’s cleverly devised closed-circuit and computeranimation video design. Estlack and White rapidly segue from one character to another with smooth, quick definition and graceful, sometimes fierce physicality.
They’re survivors, trying to piece together memories of the disaster that hit their city or gathering the short and long blocks of wood that are all that remain. In one particularly vibrant visual (thanks to Ray Oppenheimer’s lighting) they emerge from the detritus to be confronted by Gomez’s intrusive reporter, until White’s interview subject comically turns the tables by improvising better camera angles and backgrounds.
Estlack is one obnoxious platitude-spouting civic leader and plays a slippery mayor being interviewed by White alternating between confrontational and pushover talk-show hosts. White is terrific, in one of the funniest passages, as a popcorn-gorging moviegoer watching, and providing all the sound effects, as Estlack suffers a disaster. And, again, as an ineffective politician being coached by Estlack — voice, stance, tone and temperament — until he comes across as a made-in-Hollywood “natural” leader.
As political satire, which seems to be part of the point, “Blockbuster” could be more incisive. As cultural commentary, it’s more effective. No one person is likely to pick up on even half of the many “source” references listed in the program. But you can’t miss the evocative humor and impact of the result.