By Ernest Kearney — House of Tales is bursting with concepts and ideas to the point of avalanching the audience underneath them.
Director Changting Lu has an actor wandering the lobby, even before the show commences, all wide-eyed with a lit, ball-shaped lantern searching every corner of the foyer and each individual’s face as if he were Diogenes of Sinope searching for an honest man.
“House of Tales, “Writer, Director Changting Lu
Once inside the theatre, the audience finds itself in a vortex of swirling and disjointed data:
A Chinese folk tale of a fish who fell in love with poet –
“His poems are water to my heart… !”
Actors shuffling in cadence about the stage conversing in a language not my own –
A disembodied Google Map voice intoning directions that abruptly breaks off, only to repeat –
Actors whispering cryptic messages to the audience –
A “Big Brother” figure who unwinds caution tape between the audience and the stage, which may be the most fitting image for this entire effort.
Are there ideas and thoughts here?
Undoubtedly – a surfeit of them. Dangling before the audience like – if you’ll pardon the cultural cross-referencing – a defiant piñata daring you to take a swing.
Overall the presentation was one of a tightly-controlled structure, a precisely-chiseled artistry that felt unnervingly constrained.
I can’t claim to understand all that was placed before me. Then again, perhaps Lu and her ensemble of young Chinese and Chinese-American actors are uninterested in being understood and seek only to be experienced.
Well, an experience it is.
A SILVER MEDAL for House of Tales for, while it unsettled it did not impact.
Or maybe I was just unable to strike the piñata hard enough.
♦ ♦ ♦
House of Tales
Is playing during Hollywood Fringe 2018
at
The Complex Hollywood, The Dorie Theatre
6476 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038
For Information, Tickets and Reservations Go To
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