I knew that I must speed to my computer as soon as the T's balky Green Line and Red Line could get me there so that I could begin to recount what I just experienced at the Cutler Majestic Theatre - before the effects of the drug have worn off completely. The drug I reference is the intoxicating elixir of ingenious creativity combined with world class story telling and theatrical leger de main that has my head and heart and brain spinning. My thoughts about tonight's performance of "Needles And Opium" are still in an inchoate form, but I will spit them out as they bubble to the surface lest they evanesce into the ether and I lose them forever.
I have never spent a more disequilibriating evening at the theater, and I am still on "pins and needles" from the effect of watching the conjoined stories of Miles Davis and French poet Jean Cocteau told through the words of Writer/Director Robert Lepage and acted out by Marc Labreche and Wellesley Robertson III. In 1949, Miles Davis and Jean Cocteau were artists embarking on parallel journeys that constitute an altered state Tale of Two Cities - New York and Paris. Having experienced the highs and lows of life in NYC, Cocteau used his time aboard a flight back to Paris to pen his iconic "Letter to Americans," chronicling his fascination and concern with the American experiment. Around the same period of time, Miles Davis is tasting Paris for the first time, inhaling the freedom and exhilaration of being received as an artist first, rather than marginalized as a Negro. Their parallel journeys also included seasons of dealing with the many layers of creative genius marbled with despair, Davis self-medicated with heroin - Cocteau with opium. Using the words of Cocteau and the music of Davis, Labreche and Robertson invite us on a journey to simulate what the inner lives of the two genius artists may have felt like. Up is not always up. In a set designed by Carl Fillion, the two men navigate the hollow inside of half a cube that becomes a hotel room, a recording studio, a post-production film facility, a New York subway, a streetscape, the Milky Way. Much of the magic is provided by the brilliant projections of Lionel Armoud, Lighting of Bruno Matte, Music and Sound of Jean-Sebastien Cote.
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| Marc Labreche "Needles And Opium" ArtsEmerson Through April 12 Photo by Nicola-Frank Vachon |
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| Marc Labreche "Needles And Opium" ArtsEmerson Through April 12 Photo by Nicola-Frank Vachon |
As the cube rotates in three axes, the actors stand, lie, float, fall, roll and loll - depending on how the tectonic plates of their inner and outer worlds are grinding against one another.
There comes a moment at the climax of the evening when M. Labreche seems to be hovering above the cosmos reciting excerpts from Cocteau's letter. He is speaking of the sounds of Louis Armstrong's trumpet as a cry ascending to heaven, wondering what that cry might be saying. I was tempted to shout out: "It is saying 'I can't breathe!'" And suddenly a far away world of jazz and Film Noir and bebop and dope injected themselves into the vein of our current struggle with police brutality and needless death. Art frees us up and propels us to make connections that do not occur on a purely rational and cognitive level. And that is why, for me, theater is as addicting as the high that Davis and Cocteau experienced from their opiates.
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| Wellesley Robertson III as Miles Davis "Needles And Opium" ArtsEmerson Through April 12 Photo by Nicola-Frank Vachon |
This show has a limited run and must close on Sunday. Do not miss this unforgettable walk on the wild side of theater and magic.
ArtsEmerson Website
Enjoy!
Al
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