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Circus action sparkles but UMO's take on the millennium is tedious
Wednesday, July 14, 1999
By JOE ADCOCK
UMO Ensemble's "Millennium Circus," currently playing in an airplane hangar at what used to be the Sand Point Naval Air Station, splits right down the middle.
The circus part is great, especially when four aerialists are hurtling down from perches up near the rafters and bouncing and spinning on bungee cords while the band goes crazy with what sounds like Turkish wedding music.
The millennium part, however, is tedious. UMO has a weakness for big ideas. The seven performers represent one or more archetypes. Among these are cynicism, pragmatism, mysticism, eroticism, puritanism, nihilism, resignation, rigidity, doggedness, compassion and frivolity. Each stance is accompanied by exhortations: do this, do that, be this, be that.
In part, the extreme positions the performers assume are a way of ridiculing Y2K hysteria. Fine. Good. But the satire is not very funny and not very subtle.
But let's concentrate here on the good stuff. The setting itself is dramatic. The novelty of performances in an airplane hangar will wear off. But for most of us, a theater with a 50-foot ceiling and a playing space that could be a soccer field is still awesome.
UMO directors David Godsey and Larry Pisoni employ what is called a "promenade style." The audience is herded here and there by ushers in white gauze jump suits and hard hats.
Though there are bleachers and folding chairs for some episodes, spectators do a lot of walking and standing. Wear comfortable shoes if you go.
One staging area involves pyramids of desks and tables. Here Kevin Joyce holds forth. He speaks incomprehensible bureaucratic jargon. Such language is irksome and boring when bureacrats use it. And it is irksome
THEATER REVIEW
Millennium Circus. An UMO Ensemble production in a hangar at the former Sand Point Naval Air Station. Enter at Northeast 80th Street and Sand Point Way Northeast, turning east at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration sign. Runs through Aug. 15. Tickets $10-$15, discounts for children, groups, students and seniors; available at University Book Store, Elliott Bay Book Co. or 206-463-2128.
and boring when Joyce uses it, satirical intent notwithstanding.
Another area is a sort of temple with a gong at the top. It is especially useful for exhortations and preachments. Satirical intent doesn't do much for them, either. Then there are some gardens. One has a pool that becomes a caldron of flames when satire and big ideas are set aside and things get exciting.
The four horsemen of the apocalypse come in riding bicycles with fancy horsehead handlebar ornaments. A sullen, sulky teenage punk, played by Jennifer Cohen, dies for some mysterious reason. After some solemnities involving flaming luau torches and portentous chanting about heaven and earth, Cohen is taken into a Greek-looking tomb. Her resurrection is spectacular. She rises reclining within a loop of rope. Then she does neat tricks inside, around and below the loop.
UMO is rich in production and performance skills. If only the company had a writer with flash and dash that could equal bungee acrobatics, apocalyptic bicycles and a flaming caldron.
P-I theater critic Joe Adcock can be reached at 206-448-8369 or
joeadcock@seattle-pi.com.
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