Modern Macabre

The Black Rider melds the best parts of its creators into one, spine-chilling spectacle.
by Lesley Bargar
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 masks

Walking out of the Ahmanson Theater on the opening night of the Robert Wilson/Tom Waits/William S. Burroughs play The Black Rider last week, I overheard people comparing the performance to many things: “It’s like if Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton made a musical!” “It’s what David Lynch would have done!” “Did you see Dave Foley by the snack bar!?” In my head—still swirling from the theatrical attack of light, color and creepiness I’d just witnessed—I disagreed. There was no need for any outside analogies. It was completely, indisputably, exactly, 100 percent what one would imagine would come out if Robert Wilson, William S. Burroughs and Tom Waits were mashed together and squeezed through one of those plastic play-dough factory sets. No Seuss needed.

The play is based on the 1821 opera Der Freischütz, which is itself a fancification of the timeless, genre-bending, classically German theme of selling your soul to the devil to achieve whatever your heart desires. In this case, the soul in question belongs to young Wilhelm (played by a gloriously eerie, Cabaret emcee-like Matt McGrath), and the prize for which it yearns is Käthchen (played by a comically stiff Mary Margaret O’Hara, recording artist and sister of actress Catherine O’Hara), the daughter of an old forester.

The “old forester” (also known as Bertram, played by Dean Robinson) has other plans for his daughter, which include marrying hunter extraordinaire (and dude straight out of my nightmares) Robert (an incredibly frightening, quirky, long-haired Nigel Richards who spends the entirety of the night with his mouth agape in a rigor mortis smile, and thereby steals the show). Käthchen suggests to Wilhelm that if he becomes a better hunter then her father will let them marry. Problem is, Wilhelm could empty 4,000 rounds of ammunition into a dense herd of animals and not split a hair…which we witness in a hilarious display of disastrous hunting skills. Solution: Wilhelm sells his soul to the devil, aka Pegleg (never quite figured the name out, but he’s played by writhing, cat-like show stopper Vance Avery), in exchange for magic bullets that allow him to hit anything, and I mean anything, even with his eyes closed.

It should be no surprise, however, that ultimately there’s a catch, and though Käthchen’s father is quite wooed by Wilhelm’s hunting skills, all do not live happily ever after.

And that’s the basic plot. It’s extremely simplistic on the surface, which perfectly balances the eclectic, over-the-top fantasy world in which it plays out. Looming in the background in some sort of Beetlejuice-esque coffin shaped box is somebody apparently named Kuno (played by a lanky, blonde, straight-outta-The Munsters Richard Strange) who pipes in now and again as a sort of baritone, one-man Greek chorus. All characters emerge—and ultimately retreat into—a 2001: A Space Odyssey obelisk. The story is slightly modernized with what can only be Burroughs’ signature drug metaphors and, well, it’s just generally a psychedelic freak out. All this easily makes up a plot deep enough to come up to your ankles.

Though I can’t help but suspect there’s way more going on here. Anyone who has read Burroughs knows that it’s only in concentrating and rereading the intricate wordplay of each line that the depth of meaning is fully revealed. The only problem with having delightfully gothic characters quickly screech Burroughs’ lines is that there is no chance to go back, to pause, to contemplate. Of course, maybe that’s intentional. Either way, it’s mind blowing.

The bulk of the blowing comes thanks to the contributions of acclaimed surrealist director Wilson (who also created much of the set design) and the drunken carnival music of the Black Rider himself, Tom Waits. Together, the two provide an audio-visual assault on the senses. Fluorescent hues illuminate skewed shapes and angles that form the roughest of sets, while tinkling, broken piano, warbling horns and sludgy rhythms become the soundtrack for this psychedelic merry-go-round gone wrong. The visual impact is completed by Halloween-style makeup, extreme hairstyles (straight up, straight down, or sideways), and costumes that have a sort of thick, rigid minimalism in solid colors like red, purple, green, and gray—emphasizing the “morality tale” quality of the characters.

Every aspect of The Black Rider is delightfully macabre, and left me—like the rest of the audience—with a devilish grin on my face and some eerie-ass tunes in my head. And while I feel like there are some things I may have missed due to the play’s abstract nature, it was easy to see the influences of the main reasons people will flock to this play: Robert Wilson, Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs. LAA

The Black Rider plays at the Ahmanson Theatre through June 11. 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown. $30-$95. For tickets, call (213) 628-2772.