heart of darkness
by Douglas Messerli
Len
Jenkin Dark Ride / New York, Soho
Rep, November 13, 1981 / the production I saw was a revival of the play at the
Soho Rep in early 1996.
Len
Jenkin Dark Ride and Other Plays (Los
Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1993)
In the Soho Rep revival which I witnessed,
the audience, if I remember correctly, was seated in the center of a vast,
slightly raised diorama, upon which the various scenes of the play took place.
At first, these characters and their stories appear to be unrelated. The
Translator tells of the impossibility of working with his text; Margo sits in a
room reading, watching television, and listening to music where, oddly, the
Jewler, Ravensburg, talks to her; the Thief enters a café, the Embers, where he
encounters the Waitress and the cook, Deep Sea Ed; the General explains a
series of nonexistent encounters where each side attempts to trick the other,
arguing that “the more likely an opponent’s
action seems the less likely it becomes.”
Yet from the beginning Jenkin encourages us to perceive mysterious links, most
often by beginning with words or actions similar to those with which the
previous scene has just ended.
Soon these interlinkings grow more complex
as unlikely figures encounter each other and often seem to know incidents of
their life. By the end of the play, in fact, the playwright has whipped up a
strange story with a bizarre logic. Ravensburg’s jewels have been stolen by the
Thief, and the jeweler appears to be working with the General to track them
down by luring the Thief to an occultist’s convention, headed by Zendavesta, in
Mexico. Margo is kidnapped to serve as bait, and Edna invited down to perform.
Throughout, the characters speak of “coincidence,”
which often seems the most predominant element of the work. Mrs. Lammle tells
us a story of Madame Edna giving a young girl waiting outside her
fortune-telling parlor a Charlotte Russe, meeting her again, years later in an
expensive restaurant, where once more she shared her Charlotte Russe. The two
meet up a third time at the convention where Charlotte Russes are served as
dessert, where Madame Edna, attending another affair, becomes lost in the
basement and, to
seek help, knocks on the same girl’s door.
Any connections, consequently, are left
to the audience not to the author to sew together. What Jenkin has marvelously
whipped up is a whirlwind voyage through the heads of dark dreamers which
includes most the favorite American pastimes: invention, acquiring wealth,
love, dreams, religion, perversity, and violence. Put together they spell
something, even if one cannot completely translate the magic talisman. If
nothing else, in Jenkin’s heady brew, they absolutely entertain!
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