[NEohioPAL] Review of "Lobster Alice" at convergence-continuum

[Bob Abelman]

con-con's 'Lobster Alice' is an amuse-bouche of absurdity

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the Cleveland Jewish News on 3/21/14

 

 

The surrealism movement in the early 20th century attempted to resolve the contradictions between irrational dreams and cerebral reality.  The result was art that was uninhibited, provocative and - despite its production of disturbing, erotic and unexpected imagery - wonderfully whimsical.   

 

Kira Obolensky's "Lobster Alice," which is set during this period and is currently on stage at convergence-continuum's Liminis Theatre, foregoes the provocative and heads straight for the whimsy.

 

The play is based on the unlikely yet historical collaboration between renowned surrealist painter Salvador Dali and the Walt Disney Studios in 1946.   For eight months, Dali worked with animator John Hench to create what was to be a six-minute "Fantasia"-like film sequence combining state-of-the-art animation with live dancers and special effects set to the lilting love song "Destino."   

 

According to Dali, the plot of the film was "a magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time."  

 

Walt Disney said it was "a simple story about a young girl in search of true love."  

 

With the artists literally and figuratively on a different page, nothing resulted from this secret collaboration except for a storyboard of highly cryptic illustrations, a 17-second animation test and, in 1999, this play.

 

"Lobster Alice" is a fictional speculation of what happened behind the closed doors at Disney Studios.  And because the film studio was working on an animated version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" at the time, the playwright chose to tell this story through the eyes of a young, adventure-seeking secretary named Alice Horowitz.

 

 In fact, "Lobster Alice" takes us on Alice's increasingly absurd journey of self-discovery, with the timid Disney animator John Finch becoming more and more like the Wonderland Door Mouse and the effusive Dali taking on the role of the Mad Hatter the more we venture down the rabbit hole.  

 

Like the animated film "Alice in Wonderland," this play takes a rather conventional approach to the subject of surrealism.  Neither the script nor the play's design captures the disturbing, dreamlike quality of the source material, offering instead a topsy-turvy alternative world.  Strong visual imagination, inventiveness and risk-taking are replaced with a series of sight gags and everything takes place in an unremarkable Disney studio office space in Burbank rather than a Dali-esque dreamscape. 

 

A more surreal treatise on the meeting between Dali and Disney would certainly have been a more provocative and satisfying main course - much like how John Logan's "Red" captured, theatrically, the abstract expressionism of painter Mark Rothko.  However, "Lobster Alice" sets its sights on serving only as an amuse-bouche - a small taste of something delicious and complex that will not be made available in larger supply. 

 

con-con director/designer Clyde Simon understands this and fully embraces the fun and folly residing in this play.

 

The best evidence of this is his casting of Sarah Maria Hess as Alice.  An actress with Lucille Ball instincts and wind-blown blonde hair that creates the illusion of perpetual motion, Hess assumes all the highly stylized and period-appropriate mannerisms of her animated Wonderland counterpart and is absolutely charming.  So, too, is Tim Coles as apprehensive, old-fashioned Disney animator John Finch, who serves as the perfect counterpoint to Grey Cross as the charismatic rapscallion Dali.  All three make the most of some pedestrian writing that pops up here and there and, along with Beau Reinker as the hookah-smoking Caterpiller, react to the play's influx of absurdity with deliciously casual aplomb.

 

All this is facilitated by Lisa Wiley's clever lighting design and a welcome bit of video art with original music by Bobby Coyne, courtesy of Tom Kondilas.  Although most of the special effects offered in con-con's production are low-budget affairs, the couch in the middle of the office - which represents Alice's fantasies - sports an entrance into Wonderland that is as clever as it is hilarious.

 

In 2003, Walt Disney's nephew Roy Disney unearthed the Dali/Hench storyboards and, with a team of 25 animators, finished the film 58 years after its conception and included Hench's original footage.  

 

In the film (go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dIznsAdTOE), love wins out as the theme over Dali's vision of a labyrinth of time, and the finished product is more of a Disneyfied rendition of the original project than anything Dali-esque.  Still, it is an interesting work.

 

The same can be said about "Lobster Alice."

 

WHAT:           "Lobster Alice"

WHERE:        convergence-continuum's Liminis Theatre, 2438 Scranton Rd., Tremont 

WHEN:           Through Saturday, April 5

TICKETS:      $10 - $15.   Call 216-687-0074 or visit www.cibvergebce0cibtubyyn.org 

  
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