Word: remnant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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With its abandoned buildings, sloping streets, dead-ends and lampposts, Charlestown manages to be Gothic with out having any Gothic architecture. The macabre fascinated H.P. Lovecraft who used Charlestown as a setting for his book, "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." The Charlestown Working Theatre's current production, "The Remnant," looks at the fictional Ward's paranormal life. His altered states of consciousness are detailed in scenes which possess the mystery and horror of a nightmare. By assaulting the senses through light and sound effects, "The Remnant" hypnotizes the audience into joining Ward in his insane quest...
...Remnant" incorporates a series of atonal compositions which further add to the work's subliminal spell. While one scene mixes chromatic pitches with blobs of piano notes, another combines the shriveled sound of a rewinding tape recorder with the cacophony of urban traffic. Bellowing horns mark the beginning of Ward's descent into the afterlife. Ward's grandfather drags him around the room suffocating him with a trumpet. Though Ward manages to blow, the sound is like that of a dying animal. For the most part, however, these atonal compositions lurk beneath the viewer's attention...
...practically throw themselves into ritualistic scenes, only to emerge later, dazed and confused. In describing his plans, Ward sketches frenetically on the stage's back wall. Again, the circular motions of his spotlit hand are hypnotic. Despite over-highlighted props and a physicality that overwhelms the acting, "The Remnant" whips up genuine suspense because the characters are fearless in the face of death. Moreover, Johnson saves the goriest scenes for last...
...program lists the sources for the play's development and enactment. Besides citing most of the Faust versions, it also cites the rock group Front 242 and "The Exorcist III". Indeed, "The Remnant" does not underestimate the audience's erudition. But the play alludes to more references than it has time to reconcile, leaving a residue of pretension...
...play reaches its apex of pathos, however, in and her newly resurrected father, played by Levine. Literally rising from the dead before our eyes, Raymond is harbinger, father and weatherman rolled into one. While he is a remnant of the family's past, Raymond is also Susannah's signpost--he points the way for her to discover the crows, her lost brood. Here we sense the title's dual meaning, that while family is murder, the "murder" (the formal term for a flock of crows) is also family...