Rags Parkland Sings Songs of the Future Review
"Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future" at Ars Nova (Photograph: Ben Arons Photography)
"Hi. My proper name is Rags Parkland. Thanks for comin'. I'grand gonna sing some songs for ya." These are the opening lines of Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future, currently playing at Ars Nova. They are every bit much a piece with the grungy, stripped-down playing infinite as they are with the unassuming ginger (creator Andrew R. Butler) speaking them. You lot might think you're in a Greenwich Hamlet swoop bar circa 1962 except for lyrics about leaving the World and electric sheep and song titles similar "Android Beloved Vocal" and "Talkin' Mars Dust Blues." As a affair of fact, this cocky-billed "science-fiction folk-concert musical" takes identify about 300 years in the future, and Rags Parkland may or may non be an android himself.
The Bob Dylan-meets-Blade Runneraesthetic of Rags Parklandseems broad at beginning blush, particularly coming from the man backside satiric feminist PSA "Why You lot Should Never Waste a Boner" and Bon Iver parody "Belfies Are Selfies of Your Butt." A streak of dark humor runs through the play, only its bulletin is dead serious and perennially timely. There's no story to spoil, but to describe the evening's turns and divagations in too much detail is to steal a piddling of its flame. In brief: Mars is a penal colony; androids, known as "Constructeds," were given legal rights but are still scorned by society; consciousness is transferable between Constructeds; the U.S. has broken into individual republics; Rags used to be role of a band that included Beaux, the love of his life (Stacey Sargeant), on vocals, Devo (Jessie Linden) on drums, Ess (Debbie Christine Tjong) on bass, Rick (Rick Burkhardt) on accordion, and occasionally club owner Gill (Tony Jarvis) on woodwinds. When the band joins Rags on phase in the extended flashback that makes up the majority of the evening, Rags fades into the background, simply to exist drawn back frontward at the end through beloved and loss. Rags Parklandtraces, in a scant 90 minutes, nothing less than the birth of an artist.
Heady stuff for a sci-fi folk concert, but Ragsis never ponderous or morose. It reveals its ideological stakes methodically, milking tension out of sudden bursts of theatrical energy or world-building item. Performers share knowing looks that reveal decades of intimacy and trust. A bass clarinet becomes the sexiest, most mellifluous instrument e'er pressed betwixt lips. A single bare light seedling flashes and the audition collectively stops breathing. Director Jordan Fein moves his performers with an almost invisible fluidity, disguising key emotional or narrative beats in the usual concert banter and coaction.
There'due south nil that makes me less eager to contribute to the emotional exchange between audience and performers than coercive audition "participation," which luckily only makes a brief advent in one number here. Beyond transgressing my rigid lawmaking of interpersonal behavior, though, the move feels superfluous because the play itself does such a good chore of establishing themes of community and belonging. The flashback performance takes place hole-and-corner, both literally and figuratively; by merely existence in that location, Beaux warns the audition, nosotros run the gamble of existence found guilty of "applauding and affectionate illegal intelligences." As the play'southward heart, Beaux is responsible for near clearly outlining its utopian aptitude: "We're all kinds, really, and proud of information technology, but what we all have in common is that the people who run this republic recall we shouldn't be." The transferring of "intelligences" between bodies is a metaphor for the fluid nature of identity. Androids can even exist gender non-specific; Rags refers to an old Constructed friend as "they." Such metaphors fall apart if you try to overlay them on contemporary notions of identity, and the play risks flattening all forms of otherness into one monolithic capital-I Idea, but the play's metal heart is in the right place.
Most chiefly, the music rocks. Butler writes in multiple genres from folk to funk, and even gifts the audience ii versions of the play'southward almost haunting ballad, "Stella Charlemagne," about a girl who discovers she has been Constructed all along without knowing it. When Rags sings the song in the present, it hints at Beaux'south fate; when Beaux sings it in the past, it's dramatic irony fabricated Greek tragedy. The cast'southward musicianship is uniformly stellar, and if sound designer Mikaal Sulaiman'due south crystalline mix strips too much grit from their playing, perhaps we can assume that's just how music sounds in the future.
Speaking of Greek tragedy, the play'due south exploration of the cyclical nature of human folly is not too far removed from the inter-generational traumas that then fascinated Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides. "I come across the places we've been and I realize we're making the aforementioned old mistakes again," Rags laments over his plaintive solo guitar. Yet Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Futurityis not about fixing mistakes, really. It's about realizing when the time for fixing mistakes has passed and choosing to live anyway: truthfully, expansively, artfully. Equally certain characters approach their fate, the band decides with just a look to play as loudly and indifferently equally possible. It's a majestic moment in a play of modest moments. Rags Parklandis ane of the few political pieces I've seen in the last 2 years to motion across facile platitudinizing and offer 18-carat insight. Some may ultimately notice the play'south messaging confusing or defeatist, simply I was seduced by its argumentation. Between our burning planet and the worldwide rise of neo-fascism, possibly it's time to remember less almost stopping the tide than about helping each other survive it. If there is no tomorrow, the to the lowest degree we tin practise is throw our centre fingers in the air and fucking play like it.
Source: http://exeuntnyc.com/reviews/review-rags-parkland-sings-songs-future-ars-nova/
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