It’s probably just a function of Spoleto’s institutional branding, but when you looked at the materials for 1927’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, did you not get the sense that the production was some sort of experimental, edgy theater piece? Funny, certainly, but perhaps with some added bit of theatrical gravitas?
An ingeniously dark and peculiar blend of fairytale and silent - movie homage where live performance effortlessly merges with pre-recorded film, London-based cabaret company 1927’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a wonderfully surreal journey through a variety of skewed and often sinister landscapes.
Yep. Kinda vague, but definitely leaning toward the gravitas.
Here’s a shorter definition of what Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea really was (sadly, it’s gone already): A comedy. As in it was funny, it was intended to make us laugh, and it succeeded, over and over.
The reason that you might struggle to make that critical diagnosis is that it’s so inventively, darkly, wickedly funny that it doesn’t act like a comedy, with all the goofball conventions that automatically identify comedy as lowbrow and fun and a little embarrassing.
I don’t want to pick on a copywriter — I’ve done that job, and it’s thankless — but look at this:
“The Nine Deaths of Choo Choo Le Chat” is a comic meditation on the surprising nature of death…
Um… no it isn’t. It’s about some very funny theater people who were sitting around one day, and somebody said: “Hey, we’ve got this cool projected animation to play with, how could we use it to kill a cartoon cat?”
If it makes you feel better to frame your laughs as a “comic meditation” on anything, go right ahead. But I feel a professional responsibility to poke my finger in the eye of whatever force seduces us into believing that comedy is so far beneath the dignity of serious art patrons that we have to dress it up in philosophers’ robes and have it wander about on stage, meditating on things.
I mean, when the arrow went through the cat’s head? That was funny. And when they pulled a guy out of the audience and gave him over to two evil little English girls, and then they dressed him up like their grandmother and chased him through the forest? That was like the cast of The Damned making a special guest appearance on Pee Wee’s Playhouse. It was brilliant and it was brilliantly done, but it was really just straight comedy twisted by a gifted mind into something quite fresh. Imagine Edmund Gorey with just a bit more absurdity and a dash more whimsy and you’ve got the vibe.
Oh, and the absurdity. The spoken bits took random turns and leaps that were playful and silly. And the staging (something of an obsession for me this season, I’ll admit)? Extremely cool. It instantly made me think about experimental variations on their theme.
Anyway, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea has come and gone, bless it’s black little heart, so I can’t tell you to go see it (I was supposed to attend Monday, but got bumped). I can tell you that you missed a great comedy show.
Tags: 1927, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, comedy
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