A stranger comes to town. He changes things up. He sheds a light on deep darkness. There are things the people don’t want to see but can’t look away. There is something of the shaman about him. It feels dangerous.
Breathe.
This is not a synopsis of Huff. This was the experience watching a solo performance by Cliff Cardinal. I was completely unprepared for the work, and I still feel so punched in the gut, it’s hard to find words.
I can’t tell you, for instance, how it begins because it would spoil it for you. I’m not sure I can tell you what it’s about.
I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not a comic tale. Not from my seat anyway. Well, there was an awesome encounter with a skunk, where Cardinal plays both two young brothers and the skunk. He nailed that skunk with a kind of snuffly-mouth thing and a totem animal walking-his-talk stand-off. And, as you might imagine, the skunk – thanks to a cameo appearance by Angelina, a dog, also embodied by Cardinal – “nailed” them.
Cardinal plays over a dozen characters, and his abilities – with just rearranging a zippered and hooded sweatshirt and changing accents and vocal rhythms between old age and youth, male and female, Cree and White – are protean. His long arms constantly sway out from his body and lift up to the sky as if to pluck out a new idea or start to fly, and he seems, shaman-like, to wiggle out of one body into another. He crouches, leaps off the stage into the audience to break the fourth wall and gets us to collude with him, returns to the stage, shuffles and stumbles, curls fetal-like, and does things to and on a chair one should never be asked to do.
Despite the PR blurb, his highly original work is also not about growing up on a Cree reservation, although many people today might feel a kind of special pull toward supporting such a minority voice and perspective. Cardinal confirmed in his short talk-back afterwards that the emotional deprivation, desperate escapes into cheap but dangerous chemical highs, and physical abuse of many kinds can be found in the secret lives of children and teenagers everywhere today. Amen.
This young creator is clearly a voice from and for the 21st century. Everything happens at warp speed. He has edited his own work like an action film’s car chase — it’s all quick cuts and explosions. Just when you think you’ve landed in a safe reality, Trickster appears. Trickster teaches you fast not to rest on your laurels – or what you think you know about anything.
I’m still sitting with this experience. I can tell you if you are strong enough to watch hard truths and admire the work of a dazzling mind and highly original physical performer, you better brave today’s storms and get to the Kennedy Center.
Huff closes February 8, 2020. DCTS details and tickets
There are only two shows left. World Stages brings important works to our city, and they are all too soon helicoptered out. It’s a shame.
————-
HUFF. Written and Performed by Cliff Cardinal. Directed by Karin Randoja. Sound Design by Alex Willliams. Set and Costume Design by Jackie Chau. Lighting Design by Michelle Ramsey. Produced by Ryan Cunningham. Presented by the John F. Kennedy Center as part of World Stages. Reviewed by Susan Galbraith.
Related
"dazzling" - Google News
February 08, 2020 at 12:10AM
https://ift.tt/2H4GgHr
Review: World Stages: Huff. A dazzling young performer delivers hard truths - DC Theatre Scene
"dazzling" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SitLND
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Review: World Stages: Huff. A dazzling young performer delivers hard truths - DC Theatre Scene"
Post a Comment