A video-game plumber loses his bounce in ‘Brother Mario’
|
Version 0 of 1. Let’s doff a bright red plumber’s cap to the kookily ingenious idea behind Flying V Theatre’s latest production, “Brother Mario.” Written by Seamus Sullivan, it is a Chekhov pastiche populated with characters and phenomena from Super Mario Bros., the Nintendo gaming franchise. Essentially a one-gag skit saddled with way too much plot, the play becomes very tedious as it wends toward the 100-minute mark. But there is no quibbling with its bold comic premise. Directed by Paul Reisman, the show features Nintendo figures such as Mario (Lee Liebeskind), a stocky plumber with a talent for jumping and saving distressed damsels. As he and his sometime-antagonist Bowser (Ryan Tumulty) hobnob with Princess Peach (Amber Gibson) and other inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom, tea and cake are served, as a reprieve from kidnappings and go-cart racing incidents. Zooming fireballs sometimes interrupt angst-freighted conversations, but the characters are wise to the danger and simply jump over them. The mash-up of the Super Mario landscape and Chekhovian themes and traits — restless discontent, yearning and resignation; a tendency toward selfabsorption; a brooding awareness of time, etc. — can be hilarious. In an early sequence, Daisy and Rosalina (Natalie Boland and Megan Reichelt) are playing a world-weary card game with Peach while waiting for Mario: The scene could have come straight out of “Three Sisters,” except that the women are talking about castles and kidnappings. Working in the scrappily resourceful aesthetic that has characterized other Flying V productions, the designers have come up with a fun equivalent to the Mushroom Kingdom. (At least, that’s the judgment of this reviewer, who has never played Super Mario Bros. but did her best to read up on the franchise before the show.) Scenic designer Brian Gillick conjures up vistas with video-game shapes and hues, tempered by furnishings that evoke late-Imperial Russia. The clouds floating in the blue sky look to be made of pixels, and video-game jingles and tinny sound effects reverberate regularly. (Kenny Neal is the sound and music designer; Rachael Knoblauch designed the properties.) Lynly Saunders devised the bright costumes, including Mario’s trademark overalls and red cap. Particularly choice is the get-up for Bowser, who in the Nintendo canon is apparently a villainous turtle but here is a glowering humanoid with 19th-century garb, green-and-yellow face paint and platform boots. The acting is superficial, but Tumulty finds the right ominous stances and teeth-baring expressions for Bowser, and, as Mario’s brother Luigi, Grant Cloyd adopts a rigid physicality that looks aptly cartoonish. Because the characters are so firmly rooted in clear, simplistic video-game action, it’s impossible to take the play’s narrative seriously, even as Sullivan seems to want to transcend the genres of joke and skit. Mario is having a midlife crisis (is he a decent plumber, he wonders?), and Rosalina is dying of radiation poisoning, but such neo-Chekhovian developments are interesting only insofar as the Super Mario context makes them incongruous. Die-hard Nintendo fans may get a kick out of the Mushroom Kingdom’s prolonged submersion in wistful, tragicomic disquiet. The rest of us will chafe at the protracted story line, while saluting the concept. The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. flyingvtheatre.com. Dates: Through March 12. Price: $20. |