culture@dailylobo.com
“Little Red” claims to be a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but the only real resemblance it bears to the fairy tale is a relationship between a girl and her grandmother — and at some point a wolf is kinda-sorta involved.
“Little Red” marks the opening of Tricklock Company’s brand new performance space, which shares a lobby with The Box Performance Space — assuming you know where that is. It is an original piece by Mars Mráz, the musical director of Tricklock, who also composed and designed the show’s original music.
The piece is slow and surreal. Little happens and the vast majority of it features the young woman “Catherine-with-a-C” soliloquizing her thoughts and providing lengthy exposition and first-person description. It is practically a one-woman show, apart from occasional lines from the father and grandmother, and actor Nathan Simpson handing other actors cups.
The set is a simple arrangement of strange cubes and shapes, which are moved cleverly throughout the show. There are a series of dream sequences that incorporate some fascinating multimedia projections. Memories, starring the actors themselves, float behind the action as a delightfully subtle detail. Another projected video features sinister stock footage of a wild wolf for a highly lurid effect.
The cast numbers only four people and the acting is all strong.
Erin Phillips Mráz plays Catherine, who is functionally the character of Little Red. The entire play is basically Catherine explaining what’s going on, though Mráz portrays the naïve young teen with honest emotion and strong delivery.
Dodie Montgomery, playing the grandmother, mostly coughs and lies down, but intermittently dances and sometimes speaks. Her lines are few but always enjoyable.
William Sterchi also has a small role, but he is certainly the highlight. His portrayal of the father is stiff, gruff and believable. It is a transformative performance.
Nathan Simpson unfortunately does the least of the ensemble. Apart from a short sequence in which he is identified as a wolf — wearing a wonderful and massive wolf piece to prove it — it is never clear who or what he is. He creeps about the set during the ongoing action of the other characters, sometimes rearranging things, but mostly he walks around slowly while staring at the other characters, who fail to notice him. He wears all black and gets no lines aside from the occasional wolf howl.
He is hovering death, and when Catherine is awake and not having weird, fevered dreams, Simpson is menacing, invisible and foreboding. When Simpson takes the grandmother out into the cold night, he is warm and kind, and she is vibrant, playful and fully interacts with him. Little Red, confused, tries to give chase and fails each time.
Mostly the presence of the wolf only seems to exist in an attempt to further tie the play to the story of Little Red Riding Hood. In truth, “Little Red” is a simple story about a girl unable to cope with facing death. The grandmother does not fear death, which effectively makes her young again. Her granddaughter does not understand death and thinks it is something evil to protect her grandmother from.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
And then the humping starts. And does it ever.
Why a wolf rapes Little Red somewhat baffles me. Certainly, there is a fairly obvious sexual undertone to the Grimms’ fairy tale; a predator seeking prey is a fairly easy metaphor for sexual assault.
But “Little Red” is not concerned with that. Here, the crux is the denial of death by the young and naïve. The climax is macabre and out of place.
The script seems like a first draft. An honest idea with honest emotion, but an idea that seemed hurled hard against a wall, hoping it would stick.
Little Red
by Mars Mráz
Directed by Denise Schulz
Tricklock Performance Laboratory
110 Gold Ave. S.E.
Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.
Sundays, 2 p.m.
Runs through Sept. 16
$15 students
$5 student rush (five minutes before curtain)
For tickets and reservations:
(505) 254-8393 or visit tricklock.com
