And Then What Happened

October 13, 2006
The Bane of His Own Existence
And then we saw The Voyage of the Carcass
at the SoHo Playhouse...
By Jackie Beach

Caught in a vicious snowstorm, three larger than life characters trapped in the hull of their ship, The Carcass, find themselves surrounded by dead bodies of shipmates and ghosts of sled dogs that haunt both their dreams and waking moments. Enveloped in a figurative snowstorm, three characters forge a circuitous route through semi-professional theater careers while juggling relationship drama and betrayal combined with personal struggles.

In The Voyage of the Carcass, Dan O’Brien employs the same three actors to perform both scenarios and the catawampus crew hurl themselves higgledy- piggledy down a spiral of symbolism and chaos. Not quite up to snuff with Shackleton’s men - especially the cross dresser - Bane Barrington (a buffoonish, loquacious leader sporting clown nose and extravagantly padded rear end), Kane (Bane’s fiancée in disguise as the ship’s cantankerous captain), and Israel (the pitiable, mute Canadian first mate) have been trapped near the North Pole for seven long years and are at each other’s throats - literally, with knives, ice picks, haunted umbrellas, and feather-topped pens.

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Dan Fogler, playing Bane, showcases his vocal range, swapping sotto voce for guttural bellows in mere seconds. The slightest eyebrow raise from this Tony award-winning actor was enough to command the audience’s laughter. Kelly Hutchinson carries Kane’s gender disassociation with comic drama, and Noah Bean infuses Israel’s silence with levity and mischievousness. Fraught with slow-motion fight scenes and riddled with riddles, the play’s antics are soon revealed to relate to the lives of the "real" personalities playing the characters’ parts.

Bane is actually Bill, a 30-something, histrionic actor nose-diving into bankruptcy and artists’ oblivion; Kane is Helen, his wife and self-proclaimed "sugar mama" with a sexual identity disorder; and Israel is played by the professorial playwright, Dan, ever tape-recording and psychoanalyzing conversations. The lives of these three confused individuals intermingled with the turbulent times of contemporary theater soon reveals itself thickly woven into the play itself. Or rather, themselves - both the real play and the play within the play.


Noah Bean	Dan Fogler	Kelly Hutchinson

Executive Producer Thomas Sullivan says this witty commedia dell’arte is expressly the type of off-the-wall production he wishes to impart to theater goers. Presented in the elegant 199-seat SoHo Playhouse, The Voyage of the Carcass blasts through a swirl of sparkling confetti snow, side-splitting special effects, and surprisingly smooth dialogue.

Will you leave the theater ("Or is it theatre?" quips Bill) discussing "The Onion Effect" and the hidden meaning behind using the term "pole", along with the struggle to understand your own "journey?"

Persnaps.


The Voyage of the Carcass is playing at The SoHo Playhouse through November 12, 2006.

And then what happened?	Links: CarcassPlay.com SoHoPlayhouse.com Bar13.com, Mannahatta.us (bar & lounge owned by Executive producer Thomas Sullivan) Other stories by Jackie Beach