A Feast for All

THEATREGOERS AT HARVARD will tell you that when it comes to extremely creative productions, the show that manages to break new ground and yet remain entertaining is rare indeed. Past local innovators like Paul Warner '84 and Bill Rausch '84 have not always been able to have their cake and eat it too.

But the feast spread by director Douglas G. Fitch '81-'82 in his new production, Potluck Supper, is so rich in dramatic delicacies that it satisfies even the most discriminating palate. So it is with a burp and a goblet raised in toast that we hail the most inspired piece of dramatic lunacy in recent memory--a performance art extravaganza that should not be missed.

Potluck Supper literally takes place in the mind of its lead character, the neurotic host (David Prum) whose anxiety about preparing for a dinner party provides the backdrop of this cosmic comedy of manners. In the first scene, Prum stands center stage with his head inside a miniature version of his living room, nervously shooting the breeze but getting tripped up by his moribund sense of humor. You know the scene: you're standing at the potato dip and the only small-talk subjects that come to mind have to do with dead cats and getting your stomach pumped.

But suddenly the set explodes--it actually goes "boom"--giving way to a series of increasingly nightmarish scenarios that spill across the stage as they expand into the far reaches of Prum's unconscious mind. And to be sure, the inventive psychological meanderings are a Freudian's picnic.

They are also a literary critic's intellectual wet dream. Potluck is comprised of stages--as Fitch told The Crimson, "The protagonist creates a city in his mind, destroys it, is eaten by a tiger, swims around in an ocean that soon becomes a desert, and then winds up back in his living room"--that completes a cycle. Like a Biblical parable, it tells of the destruction of civilization at the hands of hubristic pseudo-intellectuals. The punishment: society is destroyed like the Tower of Babel and sunk into the ocean like Atlantis.

But thematically, the most interesting aspect of Potluck is how it works as an investigation of psyche. It is a deconstructed drama that constructs itself before the audience, employing the host's neuroses as a mirror for a fretful director who worries about how his work will be received. As Prum tells the audience after one particularly trying episode (in which a gigantic and incredibly spooky inflatable Deity fills the stage), "It would be better if I was a book. . . [a book] would be very clear." Instead, Potluck represents the graphic adventures of a rampaging Id--that of director/author Fitch and his fellow writers Prum and David Reiffel--leaving the question of clarity up to the spectator.

Best of all, however, Potluck never tries to pass off its apocalyptic weltanshauung as anything more than good fun. The dire message is there for those hungry enough to find it, but the operative word is zany--thus the title song about the supper that features as its chorus the line, "You could bring tuna casserole or even Jello."

WHICH BRINGS US to the meat and potatoes of this unusual dramatic repast. Fitch, who is an art tutor in Adams House, has assembled some of the freshest visual arts talents around. Seven astounding stage-sets are used in this show, each one drawing greater gasps among the audience for their ingenuity and sheer beauty.

Take for example the second scene of the play. Prum, you will recall, has just been blasted from his claustrophobic little living room; he next happens upon a cardboard reconstruction of Manhattan, skyscrapers, tiny airplanes and all. The scene is lit breathtakingly by Alyson Denny with an entire constellation of stars and is reminiscent of the magnificent cartoon sets in Maurice Sendak's Broadway production of Really Rosie several years ago.

Potluck is benefited by Prum's remarkable performance as the host, played to nervous distraction with his mouth gaping open in a permanently dazed expression; this guy is so neurotic he's got sweat coming out of his ears. And the acting by the supporting cast also is fine, especially by John Rabinowitz '85 as a guest who points out the Sartrean dilemma of being and nothingness by throwing himself down on all fours "to pretend to be a hyena"--a cameo that culminates in Rabinowitz taking a chunk out of the leg of a fellow guest. Kudos to Fitch for giving Rabinowitz several chances throughout the play to reveal his amazing repertoire of vocal sound effects.

The production was slightly tarnished on a recent night by a few technical bloopers--the lights went out at one point--and by the annoying feature of all Agassiz shows that are plagued by the close proximity of the theatre's door to the stage itself. Inexplicably, a rendition of the jazz hit "Mr. Sandman" sung with real charm by Fiona Anderson '88, Anne Preven '86 and Belle Linda Halpern '85, dissolved into laughter.

The production is now slated to close on November 17 but at the time of this review negotiations were underway to let it run through next weekend.