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Confusing take on meaninglessness
CAT'S CRADLE
Courtyard Theatre
MIRACLE is an undeniably ambitious theatre company. The Cornwall-based thespians are in Hoxton for the last leg of a long tour of their adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s colourful sci-fi novel, Cat’s Cradle.
Old Kurt was wildly original and this sprawling story requires large reserves of energy, which the actors deliver. But he was not without his flaws as a writer, and these are carried over onto the stage.
For every brilliant aphorism he penned, one must always wade through lashings of laboured zaniness. His great theme, “the meaninglessness of it all”, leads to an intellectual dead end - but maybe that was the point.
John, this story’s protagonist, is an “ink-stained hack” gathering material for a book about the late Dr Felix Hoenikker, the secret brains behind the A-Bomb and also the creator of Ice Nine, a lethal, hitherto untested chemical weapon. Hoenikker’s son Frank is an army general on San Lorenzo, a fictional Caribbean island ruled by ageing dictator Papa Mozano.
The inhabitants of San Lorenzo practice a religion called Bokononism, whose adherents attain bliss by touching the soles of their feet with those of other believers.
John travels to San Lorenzo and, improbably, runs into Hoenikker’s other grown up kids en route. Disaster ensues when Ice Nine finds its way into the bodies of the characters, causing them to freeze.
This is an entertaining but confusing satire about religion, science, and the danger of nuclear weapons. Framed by contrapuntal jazz, film sequences help convey the story’s imaginative breadth, and the on-stage performers interact pleasingly with their on-screen counterparts. Though each of the performers plays multiple characters, contorting their faces into multiple silly expressions, Dominic Power manages to give a particularly flamboyant performance.
There are some memorable lines, including: “Beware of people who study hard, only to find they are no wiser than before. They are full of envy for those who have come by their ignorance the easy way.” Unfortunately, these nuggets are mixed up with many other, less elegant reflections on the meaninglessness of life.
Until April 25
020 7729 2202 |
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