LOS
ANGELES TIMES
October
29, 2004
THEATER
BEAT
Manfred
Karge's extraordinary political parable is bleakly effective at the Odyssey
Theatre Ensemble, and more.
"We're
all South-Poled out," Braukmann (Steve Pickering) says to his wife (Dale
Dickey) late in Manfred Karge's extraordinary if ungainly political parable
"The Conquest of the South Pole." He's trying to assure her the odd
pastime he and his buddies have been pursuing in his attic--reenacting
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen's 1911 polar journey--is winding down.
We
may share Braukmann's exhaustion by this point, but that is no doubt Karge's
aim: to put us in the funk alongside these "unemployees" in a small,
depressed German mining town in the 1980s. These stiffed workers' malaise is so
deep, Karge suggests, that they feel as lost and snow blind as men on
aSisyphean search to find the center of an unpopulated block of ice.
Leading
this cloudy vision quest is Slupianek (Rob Kahn), a firebrand with an often
wrenchingly quixotic intensity. Along for the ride are pent-up Buscher (Ben
Shields), strapping Seiffert (Christopher W. Jones) and near-mute Frankieboy
(Nina Sallinen). The journey's high point is a rousing sledge ride, play-acted
with a table, chairs, ragtag costumes and hand-held lights.
The
ostensible climax is a tense, drink-fueled party with a crude, condescending
boss (Peter Blood) taunting the workers and his jittery blond wife (Pat
Caldwell). Here the play's Brechtian undertones, previously played for queasy
laughs, come blazing out in earnest.
Pickering's
bold, often blunt direction extracts the most from this strange brew, and the
design is stunning top to bottom--literally, in the case of Travis Gale Lewis'
ramshackle expanse of a set. Kevin Rittner's sweeping sound design likewise
feels as large and cheerless as the tundra.
-- Rob Kendt
"The Conquest of the South Pole," the Odyssey
Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. 8 p.m. Wednesdays through
Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays (except 3 p.m. Nov. 7, 14 and 28). Ends Dec. 12.
$20.50 to $25. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.