The Sandman
Written by Bob Fisher
from a story by E.T.A. Hoffman
Directed by Max Truax
at Oracle Theatre, 3809 N. Broadway (map)
thru June 30 | tickets: FREE | more info
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In dreams begins delirium
Oracle Theatre presents
The Sandman
Review by Lawrence Bommer
Based on “Der Sandmann,” a story written by the German fantasist E.T.A. Hoffman (who inspired, among many works, Offenbach’s masterwork “The Tales of Hoffman” and the ballets “Coppelia” by Delibes and “The Nutcracker” by Tchaikovsky), The Sandman begins as three letters that slowly grow into a plot, however capricious its causes and effects and uncertain its revelations.
Its burning focus is on a narcissistic, even paranoid, university student named Nathaniel (Christopher Hart), the typical trusting victim of Hoffman’s magical intrusions. Based on the self-defeated author, Hoffman’s spellbound surrogates ardently pursue happiness and discover doom.
Faced with a phantom who Nathaniel is convinced is the doppelganger image of the man who murdered his father, the lad is forced to contemplate a childhood mired in parental repression and the dark circumstances of his dad’s demise. Here the image of the Sandman, usually a comforting folk figure who weighs down the eyes of weary children and gives them perfect dreams, is inverted (and perverted) into a dark figure called Coppelius (Dave Belden). This is the creature that Nathaniel is wrongly certain killed his father and still seeks Nathaniel’s destruction.
It’s a journey that skirts the edges of madness, one reason that it’s good to have a protective but ultimately hapless friend like Lothaire (Ben Hertel), the brother to Nathaniel’s betrothed Clara (Simina Contras) to save Nathaniel from a total tailspin.
Adding to the intrigue is Guiseppe Coppola, seller of barometers who conspires in Nathaniel’s mind to steal his soul. Not one to begrudge the reader cascading mysteries, Hoffman also throws in Coppola’s evil partner, the clockmaking professor Spalanzani, a collector of eyes whose daughter Olympia is in fact an automaton. But, wearing Hoffman’s equivalent of “rose-colored glasses,” Nathaniel falls for this fabrication and abandons the real Clara for the doomed mechanical doll Olympia. When he reconnects with Clara, the even more doomed Nathaniel is spooked into what seems like suicide, a fall from the university clocktower, precipitated by Nathaniel’s attempt to kill the honest and rational Clara.
Inspired as so many have been by Hoffman’s nightmarish imagination (Freud called him “the master of the uncanny”), Truax intends to convey the “psychological alchemy” of this mercurial writer and his dream-like creations. Accordingly, Truax pulls out all the stops at Oracle Theatre’s disposal—cadaverous puppets, menacing shadows, and video cameras depicting in close-up the characters’ multi-leveled contradictions and confessions.
Hart wonderfully conveys Nathaniel’s driven mania to avenge a murder that lives only in his inflamed imagination. Hertel is pathetic in his fervent but frustrated attempts to diagnose his friend rather than enable his dark fantasies. Belden plays the brooding adults in Nathaniel’s twisted memories and real life with contagious foreboding, his sepulchral face etched out of the inspired shadows created by Justin Snyder’s technical design. Finally, Contras, tackling both the richly demented role of Nathaniel’s broken mother and the equally abused Clara as well as the clockwork android Olympia, can do no wrong or miss her mark.
Yes, Hoffman’s plot-heavy exercise in delusion may seem convoluted and episodic. It’s no accident that the Olympia story was carved out of it by Offenbach and Adam’s “La Poupee de Nuremberg.” As a whole it’s fraught with free-form fears that work better as metaphors on the page than creations on a stage, making Truax’s ability to conjure up the make-believe and manifest it materially all the more remarkable and recommendable.
Rating: ★★★
The Sandman continues through June 30th at Oracle Theatre, 3809 N. Broadway (map), with performances Friday, Saturday, and Monday nights at 8PM. Sundays at 4:30PM. Tickets are free, and can be reserved at OracleTheatre.org/Tickets.htm. More information at OracleTheatre.org.
Photos by Ben Fuchsen
