Review

Akron Beacon Journal

Posted on Sat, Jun. 18, 2005

Play at UA succeeds in creating confusion

*Audience is moved, literally, to share man's nightmare*

Akron's environmental staging of Eugene Ionesco's dream play /Man With Bags /is meant to make audiences feel just as disoriented as the play's main character, and it works.

University of Akron theater graduate student Wendy Duke is the director of the 1975 absurdist play, a joint project by UA and Newfangled Productions that continues at 8 tonight and Sunday at Guzzetta Hall.

Everything starts in the lobby outside Sandefur Theater, where the Man, played by UA theater graduate student Ray Luttner, questions whether it's 1938 or 1950.

One confusing dream dissolves into another as the Man travels through war-torn countries in search of the land of his childhood. He's also constantly looking for both his elusive third bag and his lost passport.

I've had recurring nightmares where I've lost my passport and can't get out of a foreign country. Here, Luttner creates a sense of increasing dread through the Man without a name, a country, a time and, finally, an identity. Everywhere he goes, this isolated man is detained by authorities.

After several scenes in the Sandefur Theater, members of the audience are ordered to go through ``customs'' to sit on the other side of the black box. They're also ushered downstairs to the Studio 28 theater and back. Along the way are crazy signs featuring the Man's mug shot and eerie videos with masked actors warning about airport security.

In this nightmare, the Man's not sure which family members are dead or alive. As everyone leaves him, he questions the human condition, life and death, and his sanity.

When characters spoke suspiciously of the Man being a foreigner, I thought about racial profiling after9/11, in the name of national security. Director Duke states in the program that the play's themes have particular resonance with today's issue of sacrificing individual freedoms for homeland security.

The play's dreamscape also shows glimpses of Ionesco's rootless past as a child, shuffled from country to country and parent to parent. Ionesco, aRomanian-born playwright who spent much of his life in France, also detested authority -- namely because of his Romanian father's abuse of power.

The play features a supporting cast of 17 actors from UA, Kent State University, Marietta College, Kenmore and Firestone high schools and the community. The surreal production -- running two hours, 30 minutes -- is bound to leave you feeling uneasy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

/Theater critic Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or at kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com <mailto:kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com>./

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.ohio.com