The Burning House Group
Review: "Say What You Mean "
Political dance showcases empty
rhetoric
Graydon Royce, Staff Writer. Star Tribune. Minneapolis,
Minn.: Jan 21, 2003. pg. 4.B
Politics is a soulless, exhausting
ballet of vapid ideas and grinding repetition - at least in
the vision of the Burning House Group, a small theater company
that takes on
campaign inanity in Say What You Mean.
Actor Matt Guidry has
crafted this poetic cacophony from actual speeches spanning
more than 200 years of American political discourse. He and
Allen Baker portray two
babbling, wrestling candidates; Jeff Toffler puts a musical
interpretation behind the
action and occasionally enters the fray as a third leg to prop
up the dialogue.
Guidry's intent, according to program notes,
is to "compare
the art of rhetoric of today's
politicians with those of days gone by." Implicit in that
exercise might be the notion that
we have somehow subverted our ancestors' substantive politics
into meaningless sound
bites. In fact, Guidry argues that politicos have been a recidivist
bunch of mudslingers
and backbiters from the get-go. When was the last time you
saw opponents settle
matters with dueling pistols? Aaron Burr, I'm looking at you.
The piece is beautifully performed with technical and physical
precision, under the
direction of Randal Berger. Guidry and Baker adopt animatronic
personalities as they
enact a series of stylized movement riffs laid over competing
speeches, mock debates
and the mechanical redundancy of the campaign stump. Taken
as a vigorous nonlinear
ballet, the work cleverly interprets a political game that
leaves its participants dancing
with each other, incestuously flirting, aggressively attacking
each other and eventually,
arm- wrestling on the floor.
The kinetically dynamic Guidry
and Baker are also well-spoken, modulating from
monotone vacuity to the charged, conspiratorial whispers of
Shakesperean conflict.
Toffler provides a musical background
that recalls the guitar- thrumming and drumbeats
to which beat poets recited their work. Sometimes those beat
poets were just throwing
words around, and that's the case here, too. "Say What
You Mean" is satisfying as a
physical satire, but the words are nearly meaningless except
as verbal fodder for the
actors. Guidry might argue, "That's the point, stupid!" But
when you repeat this trick
without context or analysis, it soon loses intellectual flavor.
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