Dr Tarr Review from Off Off

Poe as Comedian by Maura O'Brien The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether reviewed April 17, 2008

Banquet Scene Photo Credit:Jonathan Slaff Watching The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether , a dramatic adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, I was struck by the desire to find the original and read it alone, to hide in a corner and allow sinister thoughts to take root in my imagination, consume my mind like ivy, and terrify me. Poe’s skill for evoking suspense, tension, and paranoia is undeniable, and his best works render internal terror palpably on the page. Unfortunately, these talents are not as strongly employed in this theatrical version of The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether . In the story, a foolish Visitor is received for a dinner at an insane asylum in the French countryside. Though the hints of pending doom are anything but subtle, the Visitor persists in his curiosity, leading him to uncover the obvious (and therefore less terrifying) truth about his hosts. That this revelation produces a lackluster climax is one of the major problems with a dramatic retelling. However, as with Poe’s story, the production begins with promise: foreboding organ music, simultaneously piercing and deep, introduces the show. As credits roll, shadow puppets float into view, and eventually two figures emerge to tell the tale. The puppets, beautifully and intricately designed by Candice Burridge (also the show’s director), are a throwback to a performance mode popular in the mid to late 1800s (Poe’s era). The shadow puppetry is endearing and funny, but conveys none of the dread that builds so gradually and surreptitiously in Poe’s stories. Still, with the perkily spooky music, written by John Vomit, the light style is enjoyable. The music echoes the creations of Danny Elfman, composer for many of Tim Burton’s films. Indeed, much of the shadow puppetry is reminiscent of Burton’s stop-animation films. Though it does not add suspense, the shadow theater is the most effective element of the production. The mode allows for the narrative to take center stage, and Poe’s cleverly wandering sentences, packed with the glorious adjectives and exclamations of 19th-century American literature (Capital! Cavalier!), can be focused on. However, when the screen is turned off and the actors appear onstage (a scene change that uses a cleverly v-shaped set designed by Mark Marcante), the charm of the shadow theater dissolves. As the Visitor, Dan Drogynous is physically as lovely a rendering of Poe’s sensibilities as the puppets: his face is perfectly pinched and sallow, his hair as wilted as a dying flower. However, he struggles to master the tone and pace of Poe’s language, which prevents the audience from becoming enraptured by the tale of the asylum. The Visitor’s curiosity leads him to investigate the asylum’s famous “soothing method,” according to which the keepers of the asylum never contradict the patients, but reinforce their delusions as though real. Upon entering the asylum, the Visitor meets a diverse group of eccentrics, led by Monsier Maillard. In the role, Zen Masley booms impressively, projecting through a mop of a mustache. He leads a group of perversely strange characters, which include three puppets. The cast is jubilant and frenzied in its madness, but the reason for using puppets is unclear. Certainly it is easier to make a puppet look like a frog or a teapot than it is a man, but there is greater humor in the perception of the madman that he is a teapot, and in the sane man’s perception that he should not contradict him. For all of his probing, the Visitor is rewarded with a grand show. Costume designer Susan Lasanta Gittens has vividly imagined the gaudy accoutrements described by Poe—beads, feathers, and bad makeup abound, and the characters prance about like children that have raided mother's vanity. Amidst this prancing, the cast trades the spotlight in a series of monologues that would alarm any sane visitor and prompt a hasty retreat. Yet the visitor stays, hypnotized by Maillard. However, screams from within the asylum disrupt the dinner, and arouse the Visitor from his stupor. He again asks questions and uncovers the frightening revelation about Maillard and his cohorts. In the case of this show, the conceits of storytelling do not necessarily translate well to the stage. It is deflating that the narrator is the character who is ever seeking, and being sought by, the terrible and the bizarre. Since he is telling the story in the past tense, we know that whatever harm or misfortune befell him was not so horrible. With this knowledge, the story becomes, rather than horrific, a satire of treatments for psychosis in the 1800s, as well as a commentary upon social understanding of psychoses. The problem is that Poe’s talents as a comedian and satirist are not as brilliant as his ability to haunt, and this production does little to make the story more compelling. Click here to view the printer-friendly version of this review Click here to e-mail this review

THE SYSTEM OF DOCTOR TARR AND PROFESSOR FETHER Theater for the New City Category: Puppet Theater Written by: Candice Burridge, David Zen Mansley and Jon Vomit Directed by: Candice Burridge Produced by: Theater for the New City Opens: April 10, 2008 Closes: April 27, 2008 Running Time: 60 minutes Theater: Theater for the New City Address: 155 First Avenue New York, NY 10009 Yahoo! Maps Directions Click for Show Listing Theater Listing Show's Website BOX OFFICE Tickets: $12.00 none Phone: 212-254-1109 Hours: M-F 10am-10pm Sat. & Sun. 12-10pm Online Ticketing: CREDITS Creative TeamWritten by: Edgar Allan Poe Adapted by: Candice Burridge, Zen Mansley, and John Vomit Directed by: Candice Burridge Produced by: Theater for the New City Light Designer: Jason Sturm Sound Designer: Roy Chang Set Designer: Mark Marcante Costume Designer: Susan Lasanta Gittens Shadow Puppet Design: Candice Burridge Title Projection Design: Katharine Kasper 3-D Creature Design: Zen Mansley Lunatic Instrument Design: John Vomit CastZen Mansley as Monsieur Maillard Dan Drogynous as The Visitor Charles Battersby as Bouffon Le Grand Ilana Landecker as Eugenie Salsafette Michael LaPorta as Pierre/Petit Gaillard Lissa Moira as Ma'm'sell La Place Michael Sanders as Mr. De Kock Ellen Steier as Madame Joyeuse Jere Williams as Understudy for Pierre/Petit Gaillard Candice Burridge as Puppeteer Micha Lazare as Puppeteer Voice CastZen Mansley as Monsieur Maillard Dan Drogynous as The Visitor William Abbott as The Companion Zen Mansley as Frog Man Candice Burridge as Teapot Man Zen Mansley as Pumpkin Man

Dr Tarr Review's

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

OPENED

April 12, 2008

CLOSED

April 27, 2008

AUTHOR

Candice Burridge & David Zen Mansley

MUSIC

Jon Vomit

DIRECTOR

Candice Burridge

nytheatre.com review

Richard Hinojosa · April 12, 2008

I can get into something that is over the top for the sake of being over the top. Subtleties can be brushed aside and we can all agree to have fun. In the case of this adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's dark and ironic satire of 19th century life in an insane asylum there is a lot of fun to be had, though it is a very peculiar and maybe even aloof sort of fun.

The story is set in an asylum in the south of France. An unnamed traveler decides to visit the asylum in order to see the "soothing system" in operation. This revolutionary new system gives encouragement to the patient's fantasies and even allows them to wander freely around the grounds. Maillard, the director of the facility, invites him to dinner which turns out to be as extravagant as its guests are eccentric. They are dressed in bizarre clothes and seem to be having more fun than they should be. When the traveler inquires about the soothing system Maillard explains that they have done away with it and are now working with a new system engineered by a Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether. To the very end, the traveler is dismayed because he can find no reference to their work.

The most striking and certainly the most commendable part of this production is its design. The set (Mark Marcante) is very detailed and cleverly designed to spin around and open up. The costumes (Susan Lasanta Gittens) are beautiful and strange. They are instrumental in creating the world of the play. The puppet designs (Candice Burridge and Zen Mansley) are stunning. Burridge's shadow puppets look gothic and cartoonish while Mansley's larger hand puppets have faces like human monsters.

Burridge is also the production's director. I really enjoyed her bold choices and it seemed to me that everyone worked very well together and that gives the production a lot of character. Still, some choices, such as having the traveler character portrayed like a spaced-out five-year-old, left me without an anchor in all this insanity. There is no "straight man" from which to distinguish between the sane and insane. What I heard of Jon Vomit's original score is good but it is very underplayed.

The puppet animation is playful but in a carefree, childlike manner. The shadow puppets' limbs, for example, flail about and they knock into each other. I felt as if the atmosphere for this story would have been better set had the animation been taken a bit more seriously. The puppeteers, Burridge and Micha Lazare, are costumed characters on stage with their puppets and other actors sometimes help working the puppets, but the timing on all this movement is not very well coordinated.

Zen Mansley plays Maillard like a dictator who has lost his mind. He really drives this show forward. Mansley also does some great voiceover work for the puppet's dialogue. Dan Drogynous as the traveler portrays one of the oddest characters I've ever seen on stage and yet there was something about it that seemed familiar. I enjoyed all the performances. The cast appeared to be having fun. And so did I for the most part.

The production is packed with vision and creativity. I liked the way in which the story's irony is obscured by the campy treatment of it, but still I felt as if that fact also obscured the dark, gothic nature of it. However, if you're in the mood for a strange interlude, this show may be your bag.

System of Dr Tarr

NEW YORK CITY THEATRE REVIEWS

SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS | SAVED ARTICLES | REPRINTS Jonathan Slaff The System of Dr Tarr And Professor Fether April 15, 2008 By Ronni Reich As a multimedia exhibit, The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether at Theater for the New City can be considered moderately successful. As a play, it cannot. The adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's short story, directed by Candice Burridge, depicts an insane asylum in southern France in which the patients have staged a coup, imprisoned the administrators, taken advantage of the wine supply, and become engaged in a never-ending dinner. Each patient-turned-captor has a unique neurosis — Ma'm'selle La Place wants to be cut up like a piece of cheese, Bouffon Le Grand laments that he cannot be a pinch of snuff, and Madame Joyeuse is sure she is a chicken. The actors in these roles — Lissa Moira, Charles Battersby, and Ellen Steier — make the most of their opportunities to cavort, scream, and squawk. But those efforts seem wasted when surrounded by bright, well-crafted life-sized hand puppets — a frog, a pumpkin man, a human teapot — that do the job almost as well and to better visual effect. The ambience grows stranger with the addition of music by Jon Vomit — scratches and simulated organ. Those with more opportunities to act do nothing to bolster the thin drama surrounding the dinner: A naive man wanders into the asylum, and Maillard, the new man in charge, gives him a tour. This story line is alternately carried out by shadow puppets and live actors. The puppets, antique-looking cutouts moved by visible arms, at least have a kitschy, do-it-yourself charm that culls a few laughs. Perhaps Dan Drogynous as the visitor is going for a related so-bad-it's-good style of acting. Zen Mansley as Maillard fares better; his booming voice and grandiose gestures suit the part. But both look just right, Drogynous pale and gaunt in the gothic style director Burridge cultivates and Mansley stunningly bizarre in a white mustache that hangs to his navel.

Dr Tarr Play

Shadow Puppets from Dr Tarr

This is a shadow puppet of The Vistor (me)

and Maillard which is Zen Mansley.

Dr Tarr & Professor Fether from 4/10 to 4/27 2008

THE SYSTEM OF DR. TARR & PROFESSOR FETHER
adapted to the stage by Candice Burridge and David Zen Mansley, with music by Jon Vomit.
Poe's classic short story to be staged with puppet theater and Goth Rock music.

Actor/puppet maker David Zen Mansley fashions a hand puppet for the production. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether," Edgar Allan Poe's classic story of an insane asylum in southern France, has been adapted for the stage by Candice Burridge, David Zen Mansley and Jon Vomit and will be directed by Candice Burridge in Charles Adams-meets-Julie Taymor style, with dark, gothic imagery, a variety of shadow puppets, hand puppets and music by John Vomit of Strange Walls, a Goth Rock band.

Poe's reputation as a humorist stands secure with "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether." A traveler to southern France is invited to a lavish dinner in an insane asylum where a quirky staff is famous for its "system of soothing," which avoids punishment and seldom applies confinement to the patients, allowing them to dress normally and wander the grounds at will. The attendants "humor" their patients by never contradicting their fantasies or hallucinations. Rather, if a man thought he was a chicken, doctors would treat him as a chicken, giving him corn to eat. The method, however, is about to be forsaken in favor of "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether."

During an uncomfortable dinner, the staff regale the traveler with stories about patients they have known, like a lady who thought herself a chicken, a man a teapot, another a pumpkin, another a snuff box, etc. Amid this, Monsieur Maillard, the head of the institution, shares a remembrance of a lunatic who had once excited his fellows to rebellion. Suddenly the dinner is suddenly broken up and the asylum taken over by intruders whose feather coverings make them seem like orangutans. The attendants begin to act out in lunatic behaviors like the inmates they have been describing. It becomes clear that the head of the institution, Maillard himself, had lost his reason but not his wits, leading his patients into mischief. The lunatics had taken over the asylum, with the staff tarred and feathered.

L-R: Dan Drogyny, David Zen Mansley, Ilana Landecker. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

Director Candice Burridge describes her approach as "everything cram packed with art," intending to provide "a more lush experience of where theater is" and citing as her influences the plays of Julie Taymor and the films of Tim Burton. She also cites a debt to German Expressionist films, upon which the play's shadow puppets will be inspired. She emphasizes that the story is a comedy. The principal characters will be "Adams Family"-ish and she will use puppets for the play's more whimsical characters. Hand puppets will be designed by David Zen Mansley and shadow puppets will be by Burridge. Experimental puppet lighting is by Jason Sturm. The dialogue of the play is as true to Poe's original as Burridge and David Zen Mansley could make it.

Ms. Burridge was born in Lafayette, Louisiana and received her BA in Puppetry from the University of Connecticut in 2003. She performs at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park as a puppeteer and is currently running "Pippi." At Theater for the New City, she is part of the regular production crew and is mask designer for Crystal Field in her annual Street Theater productions and "The Further Adventures of Uncle Wiggly: Windblown Visitors."

David Zen Mansley is both an actor and puppet designer. He has built miniatures for such films as Coppola's "Dracula," Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" and "X2 - X-Men United." In 1987, he built and designed the Pretorious "Resonator" for Stuart Gordon's film of H.P. Lovecraft's "From Beyond." He was part of Robert Skotak's Oscar winning FX team for the "Judgement Day" nightmare scene in Jame's Cameron's "Terminator 2." In 1988, he was named LA Weekly's Production Design of the Year for "Dracula Tyrannus" at the Globe Playhouse. As an actor, he has appeared in close to a hundred plays in roles from Claudius in "Hamlet" to Preacher Haggler in "Dark of the Moon." In 1990, he directed and played the lead in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" at the Celtic Arts Center in Hollywood for two and a half months and received a glowing review in the LA Times. He is the voice of the villain Agent Bishop on Saturday morning's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," where he also plays the demonic sorcerer Savanti Romero, Rat King and Kon, the Ninjitsu master of Spirit. In the upcoming animated series "Speed Racer," set to air this Spring, he plays the snide Professor Aniskov and the comedic henchman, Stan.

Jon Vomit grew up in Portland, Maine and moved to New York City eight years ago. He created Strange Walls, a band in the New York Post Punk scene. Since then he has composed scores for over a dozen underground films.

Shadow puppet design is by Candice Burridge; mask design is by Candice Burridge; hand puppet design is by Assistant Director David Zen Mansley; Production Manager is Adrian Gallard; set design is by Mark Marcante, lighting design is by Jason Sturm, costume design is by Susan Gittens; sound design is by Roy Chang; music is by John Vomit/Strange Walls. The actors are Performed by Dan Drogyny, David Zen Mansley, Ilana Landecker, Michael Sanders, Lissa Moira, Charles Battersby, Ellen Steier, T. Scott Lilly and William Abbott.

Some of the production's images are displayed on http://www.myspace.com/systemofdrtarr.

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