One Big Lie

by Liz Duffy Adams

 

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The gods keep making mischief for the mortals in 'One Big Lie'
review by Robert Hurwitt in SF Chronicle

 

The gods aren't just crazy in Liz Duffy Adams' "One Big Lie." They're psychotic, charming, powerful, given to the occasional vaudeville turn and very dangerous. They're also immortal, which is a problem for Adams' humans and a delight for the audience.

 

A savvy, tantalizing, funny, at times frustrating and for the most part beguiling dance with the problem of evil -- metaphysical and social -- "Lie" is the latest play by the author of "Dog Act." Written for Crowded Fire Theater Company, it opened Saturday in a world premiere co-produced by Crowded Fire and the Playwrights Foundation at the Exit Theatre.

 

It's another vigorously meta-theatrical trip through one of Adams' fantastical constructs, a dizzyingly artificial world with more than passing resemblances to our own. But where "Dog Act" was set in a grisly humorous future, "Lie" takes place mostly in the past -- the distant world of Greek myth, but also the fairly recent past and a bit of the near future as well.

 

"Lie" isn't quite as cohesive or exhilaratingly allusive as "Dog." It takes a bit longer to generate dramatic momentum, as developed with Crowded Fire founder Rebecca Novick, who directs, and dramaturge (and Playwrights artistic director) Amy Mueller. A pretty full-fledged musical, it bogs down in some of the songs as the actors try to negotiate the heady, difficult melodies of composer David Rhodes (who leads the four-piece orchestra on piano). But once it gets going, it grows increasingly engaging, absorbing and electric.

 

Cleverly, Adams anchors her fable about injustice in the ancient, polytheistic world -- when the age-old conundrum could be rationalized as the result of conflicts between all-too-flawed gods. "Lie" opens in a tarnished golden age, the "Pastoral World" where humans live in bucolic peace except when they attract the attention of horny, whimsically vengeful or simply bored deities.

 

The humans are a trio of loving siblings: Ana, a delightfully innocent country lass (Alexandra Creighton, singing a bright Disney-fied ditty), her hunter brother Arne (an earnest Adam Chipkin) and the dreamy Juli (a magnetic Juliet Tanner), a poet who rhapsodizes in brightly ornate language about the "pellucid mystery" of the gods. The gods, meanwhile, casually visit a host of misfortunes on the family, cleverly culled from a variety of Greek myths.

 

The gods, introduced in a bright vaudeville "God of All That" number, are eclectic composites in Jocelyn Leiser's outrageously fanciful costumes. Adams is nothing if not eclectic, drawing on sources as varied as all those myths, Brecht, '40s films and Bob Dylan ("All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie").

 

Cassoulay (a buoyantly amoral Cassie Beck) is a combination Aphrodite and cinema sex icon, god of everything from love to motorcycles (but not helmets) to "crude drawings in ladies' rooms and crude ladies in drawing rooms." Mauvelous (an understatedly dynamic Mollena Williams) is the eternally heartless diva. Pow (a restlessly campy, casually cruel Paul Lancour) is a bit of Dionysus crossed with Hades, as well as "god of ineffectual epiphanies."

 

Then there's Lu-Lu, a cross between Milton's Lucifer and Prometheus, played with magnetic dedication and verbal versatility by Linda Jones. Lu-Lu descends to earth to help humankind rebel against the gods. No one, however, can understand what she's saying -- except the reluctant Oracle (an engaging Alan Quismorio). Ana teams up with Lu-Lu and the Oracle, trying to find out what the gods have done to Arne and Juli.

 

The quest continues into the 20th century, on Melpomene Katakalos' mock- vaudeville set (with deft lighting touches by Heather Basarab). The gods become robber-baron bosses, Arne a soldier in the World War I trenches and Lu- Lu a Marxist agitator whose cogent analyses get lost in glib translations by Oracle-turned-journalist Joe. The final "Po-Mo Mo-Fo Freakshow World" moves into the disturbing realm of dissidents persecuted in kangaroo courts by a power-mad administration.

Adams could do a bit more with that concept and with her resolution. Nor do all of the songs work as well as they could. Rhodes' tunes are inventive, at times catchy, but some seem to work against Adams' language and overtax the cast's vocal abilities. A few repetitive, flatly staged numbers, with the cast in cunning, schematic animal masks (by Pegeen McGhan), verge on turgid sentimentality.

 

Most of the time "Lie" works exceptionally well, however. When Adams is dishing with the gods or Ana and Joe are trading snappy noir-talk ("I'm sticking to Lu-Lu like a cop to a cruller") -- or a self-referential deus ex machina arrives too late -- the play can be as penetrating as it is entertaining.

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