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Boston Globe
STAGE REVIEW
With 'Truth,' troupe takes
a step forward
By Ryan McKittrick, Globe
Correspondent, 3/28/2003
Ping Chong's ''Truth and
Beauty'' opens with what sounds like a string of non-sequiturs.
Two men, meticulously grooming themselves with electric razors,
shout out a long list of seemingly unrelated scenarios. Minutes
later the audience sees their ideas played out as commercials on
three television screens. The shaving men, one realizes in
retrospect, were the conniving creators of the 30-second
fantasies that seduce viewers into purchasing products, time,
and happiness. 
This barrage of commercials
is an overture of sorts. Like the introductory advertisements,
''Truth and Beauty'' is a collage of short scenes connected by
theme and image rather than narrative. This collection of one-
and two-person scenes explores violence in America, showing how
it is marketed, taught, and consumed by a culture that has
fallen prey to its own advertising campaigns.
Guns provide an important
visual link between the snippets in Company One's Boston
premiere of ''Truth and Beauty.'' After a rack of guns descends
from the ceiling, the audience endures a series of nasty
weapon-wielding duos, including two Second Amendment advocates
who insist that people, not guns, kill people, and a recruiting
team for the ''School of the Americas,'' the institution that
trains fledgling leaders from other countries for a future in
human rights violations.
We also see violence handed
down from generation to generation. In one scene, a son admits
to his father that he's gotten a girl pregnant. The parent
offers his child a repugnant list of ways to avoid
responsibility that includes kicking the girl in the stomach and
joining the Army. This unsettling chat takes place while the two
characters are fishing, and the two actors cast their imaginary
lines with rifles rather than rods.
In the middle of the
production, the audience hears the story of a worker from El
Salvador who earns 28 cents an hour producing T-shirts at a
Disney sweatshop. Her story shows consumerism as a force of
violence.
''Truth and Beauty,'' which
was originally developed by Chong and his collaborators in 1999,
was a bold choice for Company One. Chong is not only a
playwright, but a celebrated director, choreographer, and visual
artist whose unique aesthetic plays an important role in the
development and production of his work. People who saw his
self-directed ''Reason'' at the Market Theater last year may
remember the sliding screens that provided a visual glue between
the play's different fragments.
Company One's 75-minute
production has been staged by local director Michelle A. Baxter,
not Chong. Although I often found myself wondering whether Chong
could have made the pieces of ''Truth and Beauty'' cohere more,
this is still a major step forward for the troupe. Shawn LaCount
and Mark VanDerzee slip in and out of the play's main
characters, while Mason Sand and Joshua McCarey play icy ''stage
hands'' who watch the entire performance in sterile white lab
coats. In the program, the two lead actors are listed as playing
simply ''S'' and ''M.'' The names were ostensibly derived from
the actors' first initials, but one could read these character
names as a commentary on consumerism as a kind of sadomasochism.
This quickly maturing troupe has dedicated its season to works
that turn a critical eye on our nation, focusing specifically on
the media and materialism. Last fall, it staged an uneven but
stimulating production of Anna Deavere Smith's ''Twilight.''
With its production of ''Truth and Beauty,'' Company One is
vying to become one of the city's most important small
companies. |
