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44°F / 6°C
(Partly Sunny. Nippy.)
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Bars, Cafés & Nightlife
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Venues
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Theater
Between Marina Boulevard adn Buchanan Street
3rd Floor Building D, Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, CA
94123
+1 415 441 8822
Fax: +1 415 771 5505
 Email
 Website
Additional Website
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Bill Pullman is most famous for his role as the dashing young American President who dons a flight suit and flies a fighter jet into an epic dogfight against a hostile alien race in the summer blockbuster Independence Day. He was Hollywood's answer to an American people tired of their tubby, draft-dodging Bubba in Chief, and he was the crux of a film whose grimly nationalist attitude began the slow but sure cultural shift away from the upbeat Clinton Years toward the either-you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us New World Order. That was 1996. In the interim, the Twin Towers fell, George W. Bush donned a flight suit, and a fierce policy of preemption was put in place. Pullman's Expedition 6 examines the impact of these historic events through the lense of the space program. Here, the astronauts in question (as portrayed by Robert Karma Robinson, Brent Rose and Justin Walvoord) do not fire laser cannons at cartoonish galactic overlords. Instead, they ponder the very basic questions of what it means to leave your home so very far behind -- much, it is presumed, as soldiers do. On the surface, the play is as bare bones as it gets. There is no set to speak of, only a few janky office chairs and some other musty office equipment. Costumes are similarly spartan: Banana Republic chinos and plain cotton shirts and blouses for all. Even the dialogue is unadorned, cobbled together from news wires, interview transcripts and official government records. That said, the play thrills from beginning to end. Expedition 6 becomes a kind of short-attention-span theatre, in a way, jump cutting in and out of scenes and times, narration flying at the audience from a dozen different directions. The actors spout their lines with gusto, but it is their intricately choreographed movements that make the play pop. A pair will sit in office chairs debating, and another pair will begin working the chairs like puppets, flinging and jerking them to and fro, making words and motions all the more action packed. It should be noted that a dozen or so trapezes hang from the rafters, and the ensemble cast (rounded out by Arwen Anderson, John Belmann, Sally Clawson, Nora el Samahy and Karl Hanover) makes absolutely expert use of them. Their acrobatics stand in for both the romantic weightlessness of space and the infuriating weightlessness of modern-day mass-media news reporting. The Iraq War is brought to life by the production's one somewhat labor-intensive set of props: bronzed jets on a platter, bronzed tanks on a platter, and bronzed infantry on a platter. Bare bones yet again, but visually haunting as characters debate the space program's ideas of "acceptable risk" and "acceptable loss" -- and how they may related to preemptive military excursions. The central characters are the two real-life astronauts and one cosmonaut stranded on the International Space Station after the Columbia space shuttle exploded over Palestine, Texas, in 2002 (the catastrophe itself reenacted by a blonde on a trapeze spinning and flailing like a spun-out whirling dervish on a malfunctioning mechanical bull). The astronauts' singular ability to "compartmentalize doubt and fear" is made achingly evident, and Washington's new habit of "information hording" -- at the heroes' expense -- is thoroughly condemned. In the non-stop, drawn-out climax, in which the trio returns to Earth in a ramshackle Russian relic of an escape pod (reentry indicated by an in-unison shaking of all the trapezes, dust showering the audience like so much white-hot stratospheric space debris), the audience is pushed to reflect on the injustices of American foreign policy. Concerns about the physical consequences of weightlessness (enlarged heart, etc.) are raised, but the real issue on offer is that of the consequences of a seemingly free-floating 800-pound-gorilla behemoth of an international hegemon wielding its perceived power however its self-interested Boy Emperor sees fit. Sure, Islamist groups may characterize themselves as a "people who prefer death to honey", but that in no way justifies the bombing of innocents. A bronzed dead baby on a platter is trotted out, followed by some bronzed cell-phone IEDs on a platter. If the present course of action (circa 2002) is adhered to, the US of A would seem to be doomed to some enlarged-heart-style consequences. -- Allan Hough Performances: Through October 7th Tickets: $5-$45
disabled access.
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