Theater Reviews

Oct 9, 2009 - Bruka Theatre presents a brutal parable about power, "The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria"

By Jack Neal

Bruka Theatre opened its season Friday night with playwright Fernando Arrabal’s “The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria.” For those who’ve seen this three hour play (with intermission add twenty minutes), it’s a given that the Bruka Company has not opted for light comedy with broad box-office appeal. But then, this provocative company has never taken the easy road to financial success.

An absurdist inversion of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Arrabal’s play pits two men against one another. One, a seemingly “savage” desert-island inhabitant; the other, a seemingly “civilized” ruler who arrives on the scene by way of a plane crash. Theirs is a dangerous, yet strangely tender, game of co-dependent role playing. Along the way the play does more than criticize such institutions as church, family and government, it annihilates them.

A noted and controversial writer, Arrabal latches on to political injustice and rocks all kinds of boats. He was born in Spanish Morocco in 1932 and has been living in exile in Paris since 1955. His father was imprisoned by Spanish dictator Franco and sentenced to death, but escaped, then disappeared in 1941. Arrabal was raised by his staunchly Catholic mother. He has so much to say about the follies and corruption of civilization his play, circa 1965, boomerangs in so many different directions its structure, or lack of one, becomes nearly incomprehensible.

Regardless, as it shreds the deep-rooted conflicts of our modern world, “The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria” is at once difficult, fascinating and schizophrenic. Arrabal neither glorifies the noble savage (the Architect), nor castigates the vicious colonialist (the Emperor). He tells his tales of mistrust via shifting personas. The Emperor moves from demonic murderer to bawling baby. The Architect sheds his loincloth of innocence and dons a suit of wordliness. In this terrifying charade of interchangeable men, what makes the play so compelling is whenever it offers kernels of truth, the following dialogue is contorted into ideological babble. Both Architect and Emperor speak in constantly shifting riddles submerged in a sea of questions. “Did God go crazy before or after creation?” “What does happy mean?” In a war-game segment the Emperor asks, “So this is how you fight for a better world?

Tom Plunkett has directed with a piercing sense of irony. He moves Arrabal’s vast warehouse of words with a minimum of fuss and with great zest for what the author has to say. The play doesn’t quite fly past, but it is at all times action packed, gripping theater filled with Arrabal’s angst over the futile power struggles of nations determined to conquer and create their own “advanced” civilizations.

To play the Architect and the Emperor Plunkett has cast two marvelously intuitive and abrasive actors who dig far beneath the surface in this complex script. Wolfgang Price is superb as the Architect. Tony DeGeiso is equally superb as the Emperor. DeGeiso’s initially commanding presence gives way to powerlessness. Price’s initially subservient presence gives way to control. Both roles are long and challenging. Much to their credit, neither actor ever broadens their performance into the merely histrionic or the merely sensational. Through a seamless ensemble of acting and extended individual monologues, each conveys Arrabal’s unsettling conclusion that the very structure of the world in which we live comes up missing even the most basic of civilities.

Lewis Zaumeyer’s tropical island scenic design provides the distressed environment that helps create the play’s series of moods. Mood setters, too, are Jason Burk’s superbly stylized masks and David Simpson’s exotic lighting and sound effects.

“The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria” can be experienced at the Bruka Theatre, 99 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada, October 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 29, 30 at 8 p.m. and October 18 (2009) at 2 p.m. For information call 775-323-3221.