[ssba]
DED
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Matrix Theatre
Through October 31
RECOMMENDED:
Images of skulls and skeletons are viewed as chilling or comic in our own culture, but they represent something else in Day of the Dead, the Latin American holiday in which people honor the memory of those they’ve loved and lost.
This touching and whimsical piece, a winning blend of mime, puppetry, music and video, draws on the notion of a connection between the living and the dead from the viewpoint of a young man who suddenly dies.
After a fatal hit-and-run, DED (co-creator Carlos Lopez Estrada, in whiteface and skeleton suit) awakes to an afterlife in a space (scenic design by John Iacovelli) resembling a rundown apartment – but with a large picture window through which the newly deceased – understandably bewildered and upset – can view the night sky, the moon, and the living people he’s left behind.
DED’s main interest is his lady love (Elizabeth Rian) who weeps for him and then, as she’s healthy, young and alive, meets and marries another, and lives her life out happily with her husband.
Like a silent movie, the wordless comic narrative unwinds to music, in this case John W. Snyder’s alternately lively and poignant original compositions, performed by a live quartet in whiteface and otherwise dark makeup (at various intervals they abandon their instruments to help maneuver the story).
The production’s impressive technical elements include designer John Snipes’s punctuating sound, Hana Kim’s fanciful projection design and Cameron Clark’s video animations, which include a hilariously reactive man-in-the-moon (the face of performer Bill Irwin, at one point imbibing a can of beer that DED has messaged him through some hidden passageway.)
Estrada and his co-creator, puppeteer Cristina Bercovitz, have put together and imaginative and delightful work, but it’s marred somewhat by Estrada’s competent but somewhat stilted performance.
The Matrix Theatre, Melrose Avenue, Hlywd; Thurs.- Sun., 8 p.m.; through Nov. 1, https://dedtickets.brownpapertickets.com/ Running time 70 minutes.
