After-Action Report: ‘Nutshell’
Waiting on a giant download at my desk, so I’ve just got a few minutes. And plenty of people have commented already on Callie Kimball’s sprawling 27-character (or was it 28?) show about the actress and the talking elephants. So I’m not gonna go on at length here.
I did wanna say, though, that “astoundingly misguided” concept or no (and I’d have to say no), I thought it was pretty delightful: Rangy, confident, and fearless in conception; executed boldly and with an attention to detail and craft that some other Fringe experiments could stand to emulate; and chock full of appealing performances.
The woman playing the Tall White Bird was aaaaaamaaaaazing (wonderfully, precisely physical) — which is not to slight the other beasties, ’cause from elephants to hyenas, there was a lot of evidence that folks had spent a lot of time watching Animal Planet and figuring out how to distill the essence of critter movement into moves that work on the human body.
Now, y’all know Kimball and I are friends-ish, but I’d say in a minute — to her face and in print — if I thought it blew. I was a little fuzzy, I confess, on the fate of one character whose illness set a key plot arc in motion; I’m not sure why she was as important as she clearly was, or what ultimately was wrong with her, except that I’m pretty sure there was some watery connection to Hamlet’s Ophelia.
But it totally didn’t blow, and it made a good bit more sense than the WashPo seemed to think. In fact, that whole bit about “the spiritual impoverishment of modern civilization” and how it wasn’t really a theme in the play?
Um, yesitwas. In a fairly big way. I mean, a Washington nonprofit guy decides to stay in Kenya and live with elephants because he realizes how shallow his life has been …
11:31 am
The woman who plays the white bird was astonishing at the fringe preview, too.
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Cheers
Bob
11:50 am
Oh yeah, the woman who played the white bird was, indeed, FANTASTIC. Her entire role was basically one line of bird squawks set to endless repeat, and she NAILED it. And that little head-bob that puntuacted every squawk? Hillarious, every single time. It never got old!
For the record, I just looked it up on the Nutshell myspace page, the genius behind that role was Mundy Spears. I need to find out what she’s up to next.
3:05 pm
I think it’s a brave new work, and it has huge potential. Parts of it were great. But I don’t think it is yet in its finished stage. It could be made even better yet.
see my review here!
http://goldblatt.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/nutshell/
yeah, and that white bird was also incredibly attractive, so that helps!
3:28 pm
Yes, the bird (the only bird it could be in Kenya is an ostrich) was amazing. The rest of the play was trying to cram way too many ideas into 75 minutes. The wink-wink DC theater jokes and the wink-wink DC non-profit jokes were lame. There were more loose ends than I could count (what was the significance of the sick woman? etc.) Overall, I did not enjoy this play. Go for the white bird, but nothing else.