by Jeff Grygny
Karl Marx famously wrote that history plays first as tragedy and the second time as farce. But what about the third time around? Sparrows Fall, a new play in its world premiere, co-sponsored by Theatre Gigante, gives strong evidence that it’s as theater of the absurd. In the vein of absurdist playwrights such as Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett—with a little Bertolt Brecht thrown in—this highly political satire skewers a community of people who steadfastly refuse to see long and far, preferring rather to quibble over minutia while keeping their heads firmly planted in the sand.
Written and directed by Richard Gustin, Sparrows Fall is a choral reading: twelve performers — including some real luminaries of Milwaukee theater — perform seated on stools with music stands in front of them. Everyone wears blue jeans and black tops: the universal sign of theater for the people. Sometimes they speak in unison and sometimes as nameless individuals who engage in a dialog with the group, which seems to speak for the common norms, like the chorus in Greek tragedies. The collective voice is sarcastic, passive-aggressive, and argumentative, engaging in what sounds like a free associative polylog of conversational tangents that never resolve. They frequently advise “Take something, you’ll feel better,” while simultaneously performing broad pantomimes of popping a pill. One early conversation revolves around Jaleela Joy’s character’s aspiration to be the community’s fire keeper (hinting at a Beckett-like end time scenario). The general opinion, however, is that she’s too young for such an important responsibility.
An overall theme seems to be people’s willingness to ignore unpleasant truths (rather like Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, itself a metaphor of a city’s gradual slide into fascism). When several characters mention seeing friends and family members arrested and taken away, someone says “That’s so depressing. I want to think about happy things.” Eventually, Flora Coker’s character offers to tell a story, which is eagerly accepted. But she delivers, in an terse, matter-of-fact tone, a detailed, brutal account of a young Jewish boy who was arrested by the Gestapo and put on a torturously crowded train to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. All the while a grainy black and white photograph of a young boy is dimly projected on a screen behind the performers. The harrowing story ends abruptly; the chorus pantomimes going to sleep, and the audience is dismissed to process their feelings during intermission.
In the second act, more digressions evolve into the emergence of a populist demagogue, played fiercely by Chris Goode as a Southern preacher with some of the mannerisms of the current president. The cheering chorus just loves him. Eventually, the conversation turns to race, with muddled references to slavery, reparations, and indigenous people. David Flores sings a moving spiritual; Joy’s character vows to keep the fire of her people, promising a new era of justice, and the fate of society is handed on to the younger generation. The end. Whether or not the play earns this upbeat finale is for the viewer to decide.
Sparrows Fall is a satirical trebuchet aimed at the fortress of ignorance, and if it shoots wide, you can’t blame the ground troops: the cast is everything one could ask for. All the artists give this challenging material their best: the unison speaking is clear and precise, they deliver their characters with appropriate satirical humor or gravity, and the singing is beautiful. The script could benefit from a tighter focus on the things that are most important— even if it means cutting some of the writer’s favorite material — lest the effect be like some basement blogger’s all caps stream of consciousness with the constant refrain of WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
And the holocaust is mighty powerful ammunition; personally, I would have appreciated some attempt in the show to triage the trauma to innocent civilians. I would have liked, too, to have seen some grappling with the process of building consensus to defy the norm, rather than just heaving the burden over to the youngsters. But that would be a different play. It would, however, be very interesting to ask the actors what they would say as their characters at certain points in the conversation.
Shakespeare wrote that theater is “the brief and abstract chronicles of the time.” Sparrows Fall is clearly of the moment, as a totalitarian regime is currently in power, tightening it’s insane grip with the apparently enthusiastic support of a third of the population. The sense of fear and powerlessness is palpable these days; Theater of the Absurd seems like the only art form that can meet this reality. It’s served as a potent political act during other dictatorships; its messages, couched in symbolism, can give heart to the timid and nourish resistance. Even if this play doesn’t end ignorance, you can’t fault it for trying.
But as Percy Shelley later wrote, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Art can do more than hold a mirror up to the news; it can generate new realities of its own. One of the great puzzles these days is why the arts are ceding their creative power to the dark magic of the propagandists, rather than offering their own visions of something better. The greatest danger playing out all around us is the poisonous division in our society, generated and nurtured by ideologues who profit from it, with both sides lobbing missiles at the other from their respective bunkers instead of trying to recognize each others’ humanity— which is, as far as I can tell, the only good path out of the mess we’re in. Isn’t this a job for theater?
If artists were to dramatize this conflict with imagination, empathy, and courage, it would be so powerful. I don’t yearn for art to try to shatter the barriers between us, but rather to dissolve them with wisdom and compassion. That would take almost superhuman imagination, empathy, and courage, wouldn’t it?
RG Productions, Theatre Gigante, and World Premiere Wisconsin present
Sparrows Fall
written and directed by Richard Gustin
playing through April 26
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