Review- Theatre Gigante

Who does David Gaines think he is, turning a masterpiece of cinema into a one-person compendium of slapstick, suspense and swordplay? Well, a terrific performer, for one. And someone who has a firm grasp of the art of storytelling. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but after watching Gaines enact the action saga with the help of two masks and a boundless imagination, I’m eager to get it on my Netflix cue.

Not because I expect to see some of the visual jokes that Gaines shoehorns into this classic story. Kurosawa, for example, does not kill off his final villain Road Runner-Style—with the help of a realistic landscape painting masking the mouth of a near-bottomless pit. And I don’t recall any characters hovering in mid-air for a few seconds before plunging to their doom. But at this weekend’s performance, part of Theatre Gigante’s “A Night at the Movies,” there was all this and more. Including a savvy distillation of the story that reminds you of the film’s elegant construction, a model for action stories ever since.

After his village is attacked by marauding brigands, a farmer rides into town to solicit protection (without money, he’s stuck with an outfit called “Last Chance Samurai”). We then watch the samurai set out to recruit a posse, and each new member betraying a tell-tale character trait that sets him apart from the others. That allows Gaines to keep the story moving between his characters—all 47 of them—and keep the action crystal clear. What emerges is beautiful and almost mathematical, but still something that bristles with action and the occasional touch of visual poetry.

The performance opened with a piece by Malcolm Tulip, a regular Gigante performer who lives in Michigan. And…ACTION! was a fitting but more cerebral companion piece to the Japanese warriors. Here, three actors show up to audition for a film, and the waiting room becomes a hall of mirrors where a number of realities converge. Two characters chat, but then it becomes clear their conversation is part of their audition script. A voiceover describes the action, but then drifts off into the inner voice of one character, then another. Who is playing whom? That is the question. Not to mention  What is scripted? What is acted? Who are we anyway? Mark Anderson, Isabelle Kralj and John Kishline gave the piece the appropriate deadpan delivery and precision timing.