1001
Written by Jason Grote Directed by Seth Bockley Flat Iron Building, 1574 N. Milwaukee (map) thru Aug 28 | tickets: $15-$25 | more info
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Remount entertains with spell-binding script, captivating performances
Collaboraction presents
1001
Review by Larry Bommer
Yes, everything old is new again, damn it: In the Middle East the Crusades happened yesterday and the personal parallels the historical. If life imitates history in Tehran and Baghdad, Americans suffer from cultural amnesia, unless the atrocity burns into our brains like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. In this six-actor offering, a Collaboraction hit recently revived at Theatre on the Lake and playing through August in Wicker Park, the “Arabian Nights” were written just last week. A dazzling series of time trips where terrorism interpenetrates ancient storytelling, 1001 lurches between legend and today. Equally vibrantly, the Collaboraction ensemble live up to both parts of their cunning name.
Moving the action to New York City in the fateful year of 2001 A.D., acclaimed New York playwright Jason Grote builds on the ancient legend of the 1,001-night storyteller Scheherazade, here a West Bank-born Palestinian activist named Dahna (Mouzam Makkar). Destiny mates this resourceful princess with Shahriyar, a bloodthirsty king who, after slaughtering 1001 virgins, postpones his planned beheading of Scheherazade and her sister. For good reason: The former entrances him with lovely and edifying tales spun equally from fantasy and desperation, then ends with a cliff-hanger to make him desperate for the next night’s resolution.
A thousand years later the king has devolved into Alan (Joel Gross), a Jewish prince from New Jersey who refuses to take sides (and for which he pays dearly). Whether in Manhattan or in a fateful trip to the Gaza strip, his star-crossed love for beautiful Dahna proves as risky as it was a millennium before: Alan seethes with jealousy over her correspondence with a Muslim currency trader in London. Though Dahna wants to be judged by herself, she also adopts an anti-Zionist posture out of self-defense.
Divided by the attack on 9/11, the cross-cultural lovers become symbolic and literal casualties of the inevitable anti-Muslim backlash and the toxic poisons unleashed by the collapse of the twin towers.
In between, along with hit-and-run allusions to Alan Dershowitz, Borges, and Osama Bin Laden as a T.V. horror-show host, Grote throws in hip to melodramatic recreations of Sinbad the sailor’s raunchy voyages; the tale of a prince who, forbidden to love his sister, recreates her in a servant girl; the tale of Gustave Flaubert and his mistress; another about a lisping princess and a horrible monster; and finally, as Alan searches for Dahna, the fantasy of Aladdin and his magic lamp.
In short (an impossible goal with this sprawling script), 1001 over-generously spreads itself thin trying to link literature and life. The goal: to show how we’re all caught up in “only one story.” We may well be–but a story needs coherence: This thrilling, gorgeous panoply of commentary on cross-cultural crises has too much drive and, with its mutating moods and shifts between modern slang and classic storytelling, not enough direction. The deliberate stylistic inconsistency badly needs an arc to anchor the action.
What the play incontestably offers, thanks to Seth Bockley’s pile-driving and spell-binding remount, is richly focused performances as mercurial and captivating as the script’s splendid switcheroos. The rapid-fire, bravura-packed, costume changes, prop placement, sound shifts, and acting range amount to breathless stagecraft. 1001moves all over the place, without moving us much. Grote’s huge whole is not, after all, bigger than its parts.
Rating: ★★★
Collaboraction’s 1001 continues through August 28th at the Flat Iron Arts Building, 1574 N. Milwaukee (map), with performances Thursdays-Sundays at 8 pm; additional performances Monday, Aug. 8 and Monday, Aug. 22 at 8pm. Tickets are $15-$25, and can be purchased online. More information at Collaboraction.org.
artists
cast
Mouzam Makkar (Scheherazade/Dahna); H.B. Ward (One-eyed Arab, Jumul’s Master, Mostafa, Slave, Sindbad, Voice of Alan Dershowitz, Dhnn); Joel Gross (Shahriyar, Alan);Carly Ciarrocchi (The Virgin Bride, Dunyazade, The Princess Maridah, Juml, Kuchuk Hanem, Lubna); Antonio Brunetti (Jorge Luis Borges, The Emir Ghassan, The Horrible Monster, Osama Bin Laden, Wazir); Edgar Sanchez (Yahya Alhumsayni, Asser, Gustave Flaubert, The Orthodox Jewish Student, Voice of Moderation, A Eunuch).
behind the scenes
Seth Bockley (director); Mikhail Fiksel (Sound Design and Composition); AJ Tarzian(Set Design); Elsa Hiltner (Costume Design, 2010); Kristen Ahern (Costume Design, 2011); Deborah Lindell (Props Design, 2010); Nathalie Ayala (Props Design, 2011);Mac Vaughey (Lighting Design)