Far Away
by Johanna Droubay
Willamette Week, Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Elaborate visual effects and unnatural performances distract from the meaning of Caryl Churchill’s one-hour play about war, gore and hat-making. Though Churchill’s writing is meant to be challenging and ambiguous, Liminal’s staging of Far Away would lead one to believe she is an absurdist without plot or point. In fact, Far Away has several easily comprehensible threads and plot points: In Act I, young Joan (the precociously talented Hallie Blashfield) seeks an explanation for her uncle’s violent behavior; in Act II, grown-up Joan (Madeleine Sanford) makes a competitve sport of crafting hats to humiliate prisoners on death row; and finally, in Act III, a war erupts in which animals and rivers take sides. Liminal’s production, however, obscures everything with messy, screensaverlike video projections, unnatural inflections and heavily stylized movement. Worse still, disturbing video images early in Act I preclude any kind of gradual progression from eerie to horrible.
“If it’s a party, why was there so much blood?”
Perhaps this is a strange question for a little girl to ask her aunt, but in Caryl Churchill’s play, Far Away, outrageous questions seems almost mundane. First produced in 2001, Far Away is Churchill’s story of three people living in a war-torn world. The characters are caught up in situations beyond their control, but, as journalist Michael Herr once suggested in his Vietnam novel, Dispatches, perhaps we are responsible for everything we see, as much as we are for everything we do.
As the characters of Far Away grow from childish onlookers to mature participants, the question of responsibility becomes difficult to answer. And what about our responsibilities as witnesses to a drama that, when we compare it to our own day and age, doesn’t seem very absurd at all? Are we just an audience attending a play, or, like these characters, might we also responsible for the violence we see around us?
In early 2006, Liminal presented
Far Away in a 70-foot-long space filled with video projected surfaces. Liminal co-founder Georgia Luce directed and sound director John Berendzen composed original music. Video was designed by longtime collaborator Moses Gunesch and the hats were designed by atelier kollodi. Cast members include Liminal actors Jeff Marchant, Jennifer Olson and Madeleine Sanford, as well as special guest actor Hallie Blashfield.
January 19-February 18, 2006
Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8 pm
Tickets $6-$10, sliding scale
Goldsmith Building - 20 NW Fifth Avenue, Portland
Far Away was funded with support from the Regional Arts and Cultural Council and was sponsored by Typhoon! Restaurants, Portland Mercury and Two States Design.
