All elements of the show -- except the people -- fit into rolling wooden crates labeled in white spray paint: "Ex Machina." The multimedia production, "The Far Side of the Moon" played to a young audience this weekend. The program booklet warned: "The performance is 2 hours and 15 minutes long. There will be no intermission." The spectacle, surprisingly, hurried by in a witty flash.
Remarkably "The Far Side of the Moon" was real art. Multimedia usually fails, but not in Robert Lepage's new production. The audience accompanied the performer on a journey through space and time, revisiting childhood and exploring a tremendous fascination with space travel.
Yves Jacques, the lone actor, played the story of a dismal academic, lost in his world of red moons (or LSD), Eiffel Towers that reach the stratosphere and green high heels. Every day is a struggle for Phillipe, who regularly fails his dissertation exams and recently lost his mother (again portrayed Yves Jacques). The local weatherman, Phillipe's gay younger brother Andr (also played by Jacques), claimed that money likes to visit cozy wallets, made of nice leather, and claims that a wallet inspector he knows could solve Phillipe's financial misery, if he would only go and see her.
Spontaneous and exciting visual effects launched the show. As Phillipe loaded the washing machine with his deceased mother's clothes, technicians added a "close-up" projection of the scene, but from within the washer! Phillipe's back was less interesting than the upside-down view projected on the chalkboard wall of the Laundromat.
Lepage stole modern reality for his epic: In a memorable scene, Phillipe catches the address for a talk-show video contest. For the remainder of the performance, the bachelor tapes life on earth on a video that will be sent to extraterrestrial intelligence.
The tape explains the basic human needs by showing various rooms in Phillipe's apartment, his only kitchen apparatus, the phone (he's a telemarketer on weekends), the solar system (he gives them our galaxy's address) and his mother's lime green high heels.
Jacques mastered silly one-way dialogues, a necessity in a one-man show. A phone call between the two brothers, in which Jacques played Andr, especially delighted the audience: they cover Phillipe's disastrous trip to Moscow, another failed doctoral presentation, the video contest acceptance letter and the surprising death of Beethoven, his mother's pet fish.
The viewers engage their imaginations in the odd silences, when the off-stage character is "talking." Jacques took advantage of a good audience and managed to make even the unheard responses real. Lepage's original script was improvised and that spontaneity and eternal flexibility saturated the performance.
In addition to the six characters that Jacques played, the performance included scenes with impressive puppetry: miniature astronauts -- or cosmonauts (Phillipe insisted that there is a difference) -- floated in the air and pulled Phillipe into 'space' at one point.
Scenes from antique documentaries garnished the plot, showing the Russian perspective on the space race. Phillipe's doctoral thesis, after all, was on a Russian cosmonaut.
Laurie Anderson's score included elements of computer music, yearning Asian folk tunes and the music of John Coltrane and Led Zeppelin.
Jacques rolled in the final scene to Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata. The piece lent a surreal texture to the scene; the stage was set for an effect distinguished by its simplicity, grace, and lightness. Chairs lined the floor, but with the backs flat and the seats vertical. The mirror wall was positioned at a slant and Phillipe was 'sitting' in one of the chairs --with his back on the ground. Then he rolled slowly on the ground and in the reflection in the mirror it appeared as if he were floating in a weightless state above the chairs! It was elegant, simple and unbelievable.
The company has been touring North America, Asia, Europe and Australia since February 2000 and has two more years of orbiting scheduled.
