'Triple Take' too much of a good thing

JULIA TIERNAN/YH Three clowns, three bodies, and Death...oh my!

Don't tell anyone, but Hugh Murtagh's, DC '99, secret collaborator on the Yale Dramat Experimental Production of Triple Take is Sigmund Freud. I doubt that there's ever been such an assemblage of gratuitous sex, food, death, and Oedipal complexes onstage anywhere before at one time.

Not that the content is a problem, and it sure works as farce fodder. But as Freud knew, you can have too much of a good thing, even the Big O. And that's probably the chief problem with this sequel to 1996's Double Take: a relentless repetition of events and jokes that is in the end just too much of a good thing. A production like Triple Take depends on creating and sustaining a tense anticipation, delivering the unexpected, and then going beyond. The Cirque-de-Soleil-for-nihilists design by Frederick Tang, DC '99, sets the scene well, but the banter and folderol that fill the rings can't always keep up the intensity.

Triple Take consists of two segments: the stylized, traditionally dramatic world of Murtagh's "MellowDrama" and "Gawd"; and the anything-goes playfulness of the "Clown Show" with Megan Campisi, DC '99, Thomas Shaw, DC '99, and Sam Walsh, TC '99. The plays build a world of characters and devices; the "Clown Show" tears it down, gleefully deflating its artistic aspirations.

Murtagh's plays depend, for the most part, on a gimmick indebted to David Ives: two characters in each of the rings duke it out with a combination of inspired slapstick and combative repartee. Each of the rings contains the same character, sometimes with a different partner, at a different point in time. In "MellowDrama" three Todds, played by Gideon Banner, BR '99, Vayu O'Donnell, DC '99, and Tom Woodrow, ES '99, confront, respectively, two characters named B. P., played by Heidi Altman, SY '99, and Maya Goldsmith, SM '01, and a high school administrator, Ermine (Bill Marino, TC '01). All the actors play their roles with strength and adept knowledge of their characters--but rarely both at the same time. B. P. is an 18-year-old senior whom Bill seduces, while stoned, on a field trip to the beach. Because of a breakdown in the relationship, Todd, a 30-year-old teacher, is told by his superior, Ermine, to "fuck her" so she doesn't sue the school. We see the seduction, and the confrontation with Ermine.

Then the lights black out, Murtagh comes out and delivers a short monologue to cover up the scene changes (which take far too long in what could be a slick production), and we're back--except that now the Todds are Vaughns, the B. P.s are Mothers, and Ermine is former Soviet Union émigré Sazly. Here again is a three-ringed crisis of miscommunication and time out of joint. Vaughn is overtly gay, he has a mother who's addicted to gambling and has erotic designs on him, and he also might have killed his boss.

Murtagh has an extraordinary eye for the will to power that often substitutes for romantic love. "You little penis," snaps a Todd. "We adults say little dick--it sounds better," retorts a B. P. She's not just smart. She's in love, and she's angry, and Murtagh knows that those two sentiments are often the same. When the dialogue's good, it's poetic. When the characters are effective, they are awful and a little pitiable. But when Triple Take falters, the whole play seems like a cheap set-up. Secondary characters are not drawn with the acuity of the Todds and the Vaughns. Sometimes the structure dictates the plot instead of letting Murtaugh's characters fuel the action. Too many scenes are an excuse to shift the lights and highlight the cleverness of the construct.

The "Clown Show," on the other hand, starts out very strong and then has nowhere to go. Shaw, Walsh, and Campisi dress up like up-market clowns, terrify the audience with threats of food and water, and create inspired absurdity with bear costumes and enormous dildos. They're brilliant in their timing and movement. The clowns are joined by a live band playing mellow jazz, with mixed results.

The clowns seem mostly concerned with parodying self-conscious artsiness, with skits that tear apart pretentious foreign films, including a Grim Reaper straight out of The Seventh Seal. It really works, for a while. But moving into the Grand Guignol of the Rep loses the intimacy of Nick Chapel, and the sense of danger necessary to this kind of comedy. Add a precious reliance on fart jokes and dry-humping mime that is repeated relentlessly, and ultimately Triple Take might be one take too many.

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