Word: amblad
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This is the way the year began--with what, by any standard, qualifies as a loud theatrical bang. No sooner had most of us unpacked our boxes than Erik Amblad was on stage in "The Hollowmen," an adaptation of the famous poem by T.S. Eliot...
...with a stage draped in tinfoil, a strobe light and an actor in a metallic suit. Briefly, what happens is this: as the poem is heard on the sound track--mixed and looped, sped up and slowed down, intermingled with classical music, rock, and a pounding techno beat--Erik Amblad performs a highly elaborate pantomime, in which his only prop is a large red chair...
There's no doubt that the show is a tour de force, for performer and designers alike. Amblad is the only thing to look at for the whole length of the show, and it takes a lot of nerve to do what he is called upon to do. At one point, he twitches his mouth in sync with a train whistle; at another, he pretends to be electrocuted as we hear a loud buzz; towards the end, he actually bangs his head and face repeatedly into the seat of his chair, and he does it hard, so that...
...that Pat's husband Ed (Erik Amblad) can't seem to muster up genuinely powerful emotions. In a play running at normal speed, he's still stuck moving in 33 RPM. The only real life he shows in all of the first act appears when Pat gives him an overzealous shoulder massage, making him bounce up and down on the couch during his monotonous monologue. What a pity that the life he possesses in this scene is drawn entirely from another person's action...
Like Salahuddin, Amblad speaks a little too casually to convey lago's calculating, evil character. The two actors' speaking styles turn some of the most popular speeches in Shakespeare into soft-spoken words with no meter or emotion behind them. "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy," says lago blandly, appearently oblivious to the meaning and treachery of his own lines...