An allegory about the unwavering power of Love.
JULY 31—SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO
“The Old Man and the Old Moon” is an American play with music, written by PigPen Theatre Company. The play follows an Old Man, who is in charge of keeping the leaky Moon filled with liquid light. Played by Tommy Beck, who recently appeared in SCR's "A Christmas Carol," The Old Man has kept his post as the sole caretaker of the Moon for as long as he or his loving but listless wife can remember.
When the Old Woman (Jess Andrews, "The Little Foxes") is beguiled by a mysterious melody that sparks memories of their shared past and goes a’roaming, the Old Man must decide between his duty or love and adventure. What follows is an imaginative sea-faring epic, encompassing apocalyptic storms, civil wars, leviathans of the deep, and cantankerous ghosts, as well as the fiercest obstacle of all: change.
The plot suggests what Baron Munchausen (don’t know who that is? Check out the 1988 fantasy movie starring Robin Williams, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, Eric Idle and Oliver Reed), the most outlandish of tall-tale tellers, might have come up with had he been an Irishman—and given the run of a pub stocked with down-home musical instruments.
The ill-humored caretaker’s journey has been written with charm, inventiveness and visual wit with the well-honed instincts of a longtime yarn spinner, and the performers' versatility, both in their acting and their mastery of multiple musical instruments, is as impressive as their undiluted earnestness. Currently the show is performing through August 11th by South Coast Repertory through their summertime Outside SCR program at Mission San Juan Capistrano as a final play in their milestone 60th season.
Directed by Kim Martin-Cotten, the show is set in a vaguely Northern-Anglo-coastal locale – could be northern England, or Ireland, or Nova Scotia or maybe even early colonial America —a time of tides and quests, on which mythologies and religions are founded—a story of an absent woman’s wasted youth, and her husband searching for her by land and sea. Yet she is herself being pulled farther and farther westward across stormy seas. When the old man goes a-wandering in search of her, the moon goes dark, and the planet goes berserk.
The rollicking cast of seven which, in addition to Mr. Beck and Ms. Andrews, includes Armando Gutierrez ("Million Dollar Quartet"), Alex Lydon ("Eugene Onegin"), Matt MacNelly ("Cambodian Rock Band"), Ana Marcu ("90210! The Musical") and Joe Ngo ("Cambodian Rock Band") are not only ever-changing characters in the tale, but also the band, transforming the group into sheer wonder.
The infectious music, with its driving rhythms and earthy harmonies, blend and intertwine the seven voices beautifully to create a sonic landscape, invoking a “once upon a time” world of folklore, luminescence and fantasy. Often it will represent hybrid Americana, every now and then hillbilly rowdiness, and occasionally the hushed, purist sounds of an ancient pan-Celtic lilt, rendered on keyboards, banjos, guitars, mandolins, fiddles, drums and accordions (among others).
There were times then when I thought I was listening to an early album of The Lumineers. At other times, the show brings to mind a group of lads, lasses and lieges sitting down to a campfire hootenanny with the mutually attuned synchronicity that comes only with long acquaintance. Folk lyrics, however, though usually done with an aura of sweetness, are almost always sad. They’re about leaving someone first thing in the morning, waiting for trains, “rambling.” But whimsical folk and indigenous balladry also has a great capacity for endearment and innocence, and that’s what we get in the performances at the mission.
First performed in New York in 2012, “The Old Man and the Old Moon” has since undergone a makeover of sorts (the revised version was performed in 2014 at the New Victory Theater), shedding some weight and smoothing out some, yet retaining the illusion of a captivating tale that’s being invented on the spot, which is essential to its appeal. Using the simplest of props and even some shadow play, the show is classily stylized in the sparse-on-purpose manner that looks a little like the inside of an Ace Hardware.
The actors configure themselves convincingly into the forms of ships and dinghies and dirigibles, and in one perfectly choreographed instance during a raging storm, the group simulates a convincing shipwreck with much rocking and swaying, heaving and hoing, and quite a lot of yawing, rolling and pitching. All of the crew was cast overboard into the briny sea, including our hero. Sadly, The Old Man winds up in the belly of a giant fish (an allusion to the book of Jonah), where he discovers an old soldier hero who was long ago given up for dead, lost at sea (hinting at “The Odyssey”).
While hand-held puppets loom large against sheer fabrics stretched across the stage representing the sea, cannons are made out of buckets and colored beach balls, and flashlights and illuminated wall lamps become emblems of otherworldly luminousness. What stole the show, however, was what looked like an old mophead, formed to look amazingly like a shaggy dog.
This bounding, bouncing quadruped serves an important plot function, too—one that pulls tighter some of the many loose threads that have been hanging from a very wide woof. This piece of floppy, howling fabric, you see, is both the mascot and embodiment of a great big old shaggy dog story. You’ll just have to go to get the full scoop of kibble on that one.
Featuring an out-of-this-world-scenically-designed stage by Efren Delgadillo Jr. and Stephanie Bernardini; Matt Cotton created and designed all puppets used. Lonnie Rafael Alvarez is lighting designer, Jeff Polunas handles sound and Kish Finnegan is costume designer. Wigs and makeup was presided over by Kate Galleran; musical direction was helmed by Matt MacNelly and Armando Gutierrez; and the show is stage managed by Kathryn Davies.
Beneath the talented actors and adorable costumes are profound snippets of dialogue. Inside the belly of that aforementioned seamonster, for example, one sailor says to another who is trying to convince him to escape, “Here I am and here I be, until I shall be no more.” There’s something charming and important about the acquiesce of radical acceptance, to which folk’s rueful melodies, whining guitars and breakup-imagery lend themselves so nicely —a viable, starlit strategy to navigate through the darkness. It’s a hardcore idea that serves the classy, cute poetics of “The Old Man and the Old Moon” well by folding real meat and potatoes into all the sweetness.
With indie ingenuity that is truly gilt-edged, propped up many times by simply the power of unadulterated belief, Director Martin-Cotton’s signature work is indeed the kind of artistic achievement you scrawl your name into with all your might. She rudders a company that combines their multifaceted skillsets together, out in the crisp, sea air at the Mission Capistrano stage, to deliver perhaps the greatest collaborative cast I’ve seen in quite a while.
Director Kim Martin-Cotton: “We’re leaning into a kind of theatrical magic that isn’t, ‘how did they do that?’ but instead ‘look at what they’re doing!’ It’s visible shapeshifting….and, if you dream it up the right way, this story can delight audiences of all ages.”
Personally, I’d be hard pressed to identify a favorite from among the many moments of sheer theatrical magic in SCR’s “The Old Man and The Old Moon.” Would it be the audible wow-invoking episode when Mr. Beck’s Old Man first climbs to the top of the ladder with a bucket of light to refill the moon? Or was it the sudden shift in scale as a monstrous, bony fish circles ominously around The Old Man as he sinks into the watery depths? So many to choose from.
There’s also magic in the script and story, which was collaboratively devised and written by the seven members of the PigPen Theatre Company: Alex Falberg, Ben Ferguson, and Matt Nuernberger, in addition to Gillen, Melia, Shahi, and Weschler.
The result is a slyly funny and surprisingly poignant story about the far end of life, when duty and obligation have settled in where passion once reigned, and when habit, routine, and the long span of time have dimmed the memory of youthful promises. But it’s also a story about how even the faintest memory of true love can overcome defining moments, misadventures and adversities by bringing long-lost promises and destinies back to life.
Chris Daniels
Arts & Entertainment Reviewer
The Show Report
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