The Balladeer

The list of designers who worked on The Balladeer is as long as that of the actors, and their technical elements contribute a lot to the nostalgic-yet-futuristic, industrial-alienated look and feel of the show. The actors are the same bunch who did Big Art Group’s last show, CLEARCUT, catastrophe! in last year’s NYC Fringe Festival. They make for a strong ensemble, though their timing during some of the freeze-unfreeze dance moments seemed out of sync with the music. Vivian Bang (who originated the role of Princess Senju in the Bat’s Bento Kozo) and Rebecca Sumner Burgos, in particular, get the deadpan delivery of the hyperbolic statements symptomatic of the freshman set.

The Balladeers, however, is really a director’s piece. Caden Manson, who conceived and directed the show, founded Big Arts Group two years ago “as a collective of emerging artists engaged in inspiring collaboration and experimentation.” Having paid his dues as assistant to an impressive list of directors, it seems he’s now experimenting with formulating a style of his own.

And while Manson uses generic characters to play through the been-there/done-that school dance plot in an over-exposed teen setting, the show’s surrealism and alienation aptly match the high school experience. True, the characters never directly look at or speak to one another (making it hard for the audience to ever connect with them), but isn’t there something more real in that than in Pacey Witter’s look-her-in-the-eyes confession of love to Joey Potter at the water’s edge, at dawn, last week on “Dawson’s Creek”?

Plus, many of Manson’s physical and visual touches are fresh, insightful, and clever. Like his chorus-line chain-reaction fight, which gets repeated–beat by beat, punch by slap, with increasing tempo–about five times. And using a boom with a clamp (held by a third actor) to transport lipstick and tequila back and forth between characters who are standing side by side. And using crazy string from aerosol cans when they blow each other’s–and their own–brains and guts out at the conclusion of the dance, in the only ending possible for a play about the “catastrophic paradox of youth’s first love.”