"PAN & BOONE," Running With Scissors at Prop Thtr
BY LUCIA MAURO
Dramatizing the subconscious mind on stage poses a natural set of challenges – the most obvious being that psychological abstraction can stifle the progression of a concrete story. Not that I’m advocating solely linear, plot-driven plays. But when a playwright deals entirely in the realm of metaphor – yet does not cohesively shape those symbols -- the result can be confusing and a bit precious.
That’s the case with playwright Jeff Carey’s interior fable, "Pan & Boone," receiving its world premiere by the respected multidisciplinary company, Running With Scissors, at Prop Thtr. And, although RWS is certainly in its refined alternate-universe element (in which movement and text merge with great finesse), this three-character work goes for too-obvious parallels at the same time it can leave audiences utterly baffled and unfulfilled.
Director Kim Rubinstein sews gracious threads of tragedy throughout this semi-absurdist tale of two brothers who close themselves off to reality in the face of a horrifying loss. But even Rubinstein’s quiet ingenuity and actor Kurt Brocker’s nakedly honest and brilliant child-like portrayal of Pan cannot transcend the script’s flaws, which are related to self-conscious experimentation and inconsistent ideas.
"Pan & Boone" opens with Brocker’s frightened Pan hopping around in his sleeping bag crying out for his brother, Matt McTighe’s burly Boone – who immediately pins down Pan and forces him to tear through his sleeping bag. This sort of big-brother/little-brother roughhousing runs throughout the play. It doesn’t take us more than a few seconds to realize that both young men are locked inside manhood-related fantasy worlds. The airy Pan is none other than Peter Pan, the boy who was terrified of growing up; Boone, with his coon skin cap, epitomizes the rugged American hero stereotype to which (in various ways) many young boys are encouraged to aspire.
Through this make-believe structure, Carey sets up two separate dichotomies and raises questions of which brother is stronger and who is really protecting whom. He overlays the piece with a Western veneer -- further mirrored in Robbie Hayes’ suspended frontier-style scenic design and Joseph Fosco’s excellent offbeat twangy sound design/original music. Then he proceeds to build a collage of male pursuits, from camping in the wilderness to hopping a ride with a cattle rancher (who, to add to the nonsensical nature of the script, is costumed like a steer).
The audience pieces together Pan and Boone’s trauma through the appearance of a man hanging from a noose. This man then becomes their troubled and exhausted father, who is coping with the suicide (or accidental death) of his own father – who strangled himself on a cord while rehearsing a circus routine. Ironically, the two young boys’ childhoods have been cut short. Their defense mechanism, however, is to latch onto their childhoods for dear life – a choice that mentally stunts them.
This dilemma is best illustrated by the tougher Boone’s ambiguous wrestling or kissing of his flannel sleeping bag, and the imaginary whiskers he applies to his face to look older, but inadvertently keeps smearing off.
Yet whatever statements the playwright is making about what is expected of fathers and sons gets capsized by over-sized contrivances. Kent Reed ably -- but awkwardly at times – plays multiple characters, including the world-weary father, the steer-clad truck driver, a talking rock, and an Eagle Scout Master decked out as an actual eagle sitting on a live wire. The speechifying Eagle gets electrocuted, and that image comes back later via an electrical cord wrapped around the gruff grandfather’s neck as he tells his grandson how much he loved the circus.
In fact, Carey’s obsession with bringing back certain words or images only draws attention to his sledgehammer-style, yet non-evocative, symbolism. For instance, the father – as he gives his son a backrub -- refers to his small body as "a bag of sticks." The boys later meet a Leprechaun, who reiterates the "bag of sticks" notion. The boys’ longing for hot dogs and noodles comes full circle when their grandfather reappears and speaks of the cowboy-type meal.
Carey’s drive to relentlessly draw parallel metaphors robs the story of emotional truth. "Pan & Boone," while it has the potential for intensely cerebral texture and a tragic sort of charm, appears to be a half-realized dramatic experiment – one that tried too hard to marry heady and delicate performance art with the gritty absurdity of Sam Shepard.•
Running With Scissors’ production of "Pan & Boone" runs through November 24 at Prop Thtr, 4225 N. Lincoln. Tickets: $16-$20. Call 773-348-PROP or log onto www.rwscissors.org.
