Review: Rimini Protokoll/Best Before created by Helgard Haug & Stefan Kaegi. Dramaturge: Tim Carlson. Game Design: Brady Marks. Commissioned by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Vancouver, Canada and presented by On The Boards. With Duff Armour, Brady Marks, Ellen Schultz, Bob Williams, Ron Samworth. May 6-9, at 8pm and 2pm matinee Saturday, May 8.
“Do you want to play a game?” That’s the basic premise of Rimini Protokoll’s new theater piece, Best Before. Protokoll, an experimental avant-garde German theater ensemble, creates original theater events that utilize real people in real situations. Past works include 100% Berlin, “a living arrangement of statistics for 100 citizens on a revolving stage,” and Call Cutta in a Box, that featured live, on-stage conversations with a call center in India. Rimini Protokoll is a company dedicated to collaborative partnerships and unique presentations of productions that examine modern, urban life in the 21st Century. If you’ve come looking for the umpteenth revival of “Hamlet” or “The Cherry Orchard” or “The Odd Couple”, you’ve come to the wrong place…
And, Protokoll’s latest work, a piece commissioned by Vancouver BC’s PuSh Festival, follows in that same vein. Best Before utilizes the talents of four “real” people: a 60 year old former journalist/current traffic warden; a 70something retired politician and civil servant; a 30something slackerish/video game tester; and a wryly cool South African game developer/programmer to create an interactive video game version that clearly mimics the old standard board game, Life. Every member of the “cast” has a role to play. The traffic warden guides us; the game tester advises and comments; the programmer controls and steers the game; the politician offers commentary and warning. And, each character offers insights into this Game of Life, with anecdotes and examples from their own lives and choices they have personally made, or had thrust upon them. But in this production there is another character, a very important and vital character: the audience itself. Each audience member has a video game control pad, familiar to anyone who has had a Nintendo or PlayStation, and over the course of the evening, each member of the audience will control the destiny of their own interactive character/avatar. Do you want to have sex at 15, or wait? Have that out of wedlock baby, or abort? Buy a car, a house, a gun, or save your money? Stage a coup d’etait and oust our leader, or not? These and dozens of other life altering decisions are made over the course of the night, and the choices made by individuals and the group as a whole, determine the direction the game takes. But ultimately, as in life, we all share the same fate…
Best Before is that odd conundrum/enigma of a “play” that’s not really a “play” in the traditional sense of the word, but in reality, and in it’s completed state, it manages to BECOME a play, meaning that you meet characters, go on a journey and experience complicated human emotions and feeling. There IS growth, and warmth, and fear, and humor, and birth, and death, and longing, and love, and hate and all the other emotions we need to feel/experience in order to be fully realized human beings. For some people, the technology might stand in the way, but ultimately the emotion does win out; Thursday night’s opening performance was a perfect example of that. The play begins with the characters coming out and introducing themselves, the “plot” of the game is described and we are given instructions on how to use the game pads. We are guided through this computer generated journey as we are born and grow up and age and at about the hour fifty minute mark in the show, the program FROZE! Progression wise, we were nearly at the end of our “lives” and the end of the show; our onscreen avatars had reached their senior years. The programmer tried to back up and restart the game more than once; an offstage computer tech came onstage to assist, but to no avail: GAME OVER! But, the performers regrouped and led us down the last few miles of our life/game journey. The technology had died/failed but time and life and inevitable death continued on.
I very much liked the concept of this show and the collaborative process in which it was created and the ultimate finished product. It’s original, topical, relevant and engaging New Media theater. My only caveat: it needed an intermission. Yes, I know I bitched in my previous review of an On The Boards production, “Awesome’s” The West because they had TOO many intermissions, but in the case of Best Before, a two hour show that includes a lot of repetitive game play, I desperately needed a breather about half way through (around age 50 would have been a good spot) to stretch my legs and flex my aching fingers and wrists and rehydrate and have a chance to contemplate on what had happened in the first half of the show. Other than that, (and the failure and system crash of the game) I can’t find much to fault with this show. The non-actors did a fine job all in all. Ellen Schultz’s traffic warden brought a warm, maternal feeling to the show as she guided us along our life’s path. Duff Armour was funny, slightly profane at times, charming and gently snarky enough to keep us on our toes and served his role well as the Every Man. His strong voice and at ease stage presence would serve him well in more traditional theater roles. Brady Marks, the coolly sophisticated South African programmer, provided just enough icy detachment, technical expertise and sly humor to charm the audience and her recollections of the first free elections in South Africa were moving and heartfelt. The sage of the group, Bob Williams, struggled at times with losing his place in the show, (but always recovered, with great humor), and his gentle warmth and personal integrity were always present on stage and you could easily see how he had had a successful political/public service career in British Columbia. Finally, Ron Samworth’s near constant soundtrack of guitar music provided a soothing but vital undercurrent to the show and neatly wove a blend of the art and the technology of this production.
Rimini Protokoll’s Best Before stages shows tonight (Friday May 7th), Saturday and Sunday at 8pm and there is a 2pm Saturday afternoon at On The Boards, 100 West Roy Street, Lower Queen Anne/Uptown neighborhood in Seattle. Check it out.
About the Author: Michael Strangeways
