Word: caligari
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...actors do their part, pretending to speak their lines and offering appropriately comedic or horrific facial expressions, but ultimately they are only playing caricatures. The costumes are brightly colored and straight out of a carnival, making the mock terror of Caligari's Grand Guignol play seem ridiculously stylized...
...American Repertory Theatre production of John Moran's new multi-media the-artical creation The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a unique and disorienting event. Theatergoers find themselves literally surrounded by a strange, stylized world full of colorful, clownish costumes, creepy music and sound effects and a good measure of farcical blood and gore. Drawing upon several esoteric influences, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a lushly imagined theatrical piece, but its seventy minutes of bewildering entertainment is a mostly unpleasant experience with little lasting impact on the audience...
Some background on the show's sources helps explain its weirdness. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is based on a silent 1920 German Expressionist film of the same name about a mysterious hypnotist who enters a German town and causes all manner of horror and havoc. The film, in turn, draws upon the work of a curious theater of the time based in Paris called the Grand Guignol. For over six decades, the Guignol produced plays resembling a grotesque puppet show, but with live actors. Real-life crime and bawdiness were brought to the stage for elite audiences craving campy...
Moran's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seeks to unify these two influences in one wild story. Penny Price (Phoebe Jonas) is the owner of a penny arcade which has been struggling financially ever since her lover died years ago. At the height of her despair, Caligari (Alvin Epstein) and his dubious troupe blast into town, demanding to use the arcade as a setting for their show. Caligari tricks many of the townspeople into participating in his performance, and they all realize too late that they will not make it through Caligari's twisted and absurd variety act alive...
...film featuring the actors from the A.R.T. production, as well as other projections, are used throughout the show. Most of the projections are meant to provide commentary on the action of the play. In one scene, for example, a dollar sign is projected on the curtain as Penny accepts Caligari's payment for the arcade. More often, the projections just flash frantically. When Mr. Twiddle (Scott Ripley), the banker who agrees to perform in Caligari's variety show, is sentenced to death in one of the skits, a yellow swirl appears on the curtain along with words of despair...