The Masque of the Red Death Pt. 1

Last night, I saw the most incredible piece of theatre that I have ever seen. 

The show was called The Masque of the Red Death. I will try to do it justice, but I know that I won't be able to convey the mastery of these performers or the magic of their work. 

So, first I'll tell about the plot, or at least, the inspiration for this show. I hesitate to call it a show, because this experience wasn't your average, "walk into a theatre, sit down in a chair, and watch the action unfold on the stage," type of experience, but I'll get to that later. 

The Masque of the Red Death was inspired by the work of Edgar Allen Poe. Poe was an American writer of the literary Gothic genre. His stories are essentially ghost stories. They are creepy, they send tingles down your back. 

Poe had certain ideas about the way his stories were supposed to be read. He wanted his stories to have a mesmerizing effect on his reader--meaning that he wanted his stories to act like hypnosis. He wanted his stories to submerge his reader in a world that was dark, a world of the uncanny, a world where people tried to find logical explanations for weird, scary things that happened in their lives, but never could. 

Poe believed that his short stories should be read from beginning to end in one sitting. By reading a story continuously, he thought he could best mesmerize his audience, accelerating their pulse, allowing them to see shadows and hear their blood beating in tune to the sound hearts beating beneath floor boards. 

The world of Poe's literature looks a lot like ours, except something is always a little bit off. his stories arouse a sort of feeling that to me is almost like the feeling of a lose hair touching the back of your arm. You can't ignore it. Although it's small, you can't forget the fact that it's there until you've managed to get rid of it. 

And sometimes, it gives you goose bumps. 

In Poe's world, there are long heavy curtains that are moved by an unfelt breeze, there are flickering lamps in dark wallpapered hallways, there are floorboards that creak when you walk up the stairs. 

So, that's Poe.

Now do you want to know about the show?

This show was put together by a London based theatre company called Punchdrunk. They specialize in experimental-type theatre. Theatre as installation. Punchdrunk shows don't have a conventional stage. As a matter of fact, The Masque of the Red Death didn't even take place inside of a  theatre. It took place inside of an old city hall type of building. So, going back to the idea of theatre as installation: since this show took place inside of a building, the whole building was the stage in a sense. The actors moved around from room to room. And we, the audience, followed them around. There were eight different stories being performed at once, at different places in the building, so audience members get to go where ever they want, and watch which ever story they want to watch. They follow the actors around, sometimes at a distance, at others they are actually running after them, unwilling to miss a single word, look, or action should they get separated from the actor by a mob of eager on lookers. 

Did I mention that everyone in the audience is required to wear a mask? 

Every person who is not acting is required to wear a mask for the duration of the show. The masks are white, and quite large. They cover the whole face, with an elastic strap that goes around the back of the head and makes for a lovely crease in the back of freshly styled hair. The masks look a lot like Commedia dell'arte masks, with large protruding noses that make you feel kind of like an albino pelican.  

So, imagine that wherever there are actors performing, they are surrounded by or followed by a mob of people wearing large white pelican masks that cover their entire faces. Most people are also wearing black or red velvet capes that are assigned to them if they are brave enough to go into a cloak room manned by an actor with a brow bone matching that of the Monster from Frankenstein. Yes, I had a cloak. A long black one. 

Now, I'll try to explain the building. 

The ground floor was like a forest. There was huge trees set up with low hanging branches. On one side of the building there were doors leading it to what I imagine must have been the basement of the original city hall building, but now they led to two rooms. The first room was a crypt--a claustrophobic stone room with a low ceiling and a lone candle offering light. I can't tell you what was in the second room, as I never made it down there. I spent the least of my time on this first floor (the "show" lasted for about 3 hours), but I can tell you about at least one other room on the ground floor. 

It was on the other side of the building. It looked like a banquet hall. There was a long table covered with a red table cloth and a large scratched up mirror leaning against a wall to the right of a stage that was situated at the end of one of the rooms. On the table were the remains of feast, half eaten fruit and loaves of bread, a boars head, and bones. I'm not sure about the boars head, but the rest of the food was real. 

This room was home to the performance of "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether." This particular performance was rather risque, so I'll just give you the description of the story that's in the program: "The narrator visits a private insane asylum, seemingly well run by a superintendent Monsieur Maillard. The narrator dines with the doctors. As dinner progresses things become a little stranger until the dinner party is transformed into a debauched and chaotic arena for the inmates." I will only add to that by saying that during the time when Poe wrote, lasciviousness could get you locked up in the loony bin... 

Back out in the center of the forest, a grand staircase rose up to the second floor, splitting off on both sides, leading to different rooms on the left and right. This staircase was the real deal. The tile on the steps was mosaic, the banisters were made of marble. If you are standing at the foot of the staircase and looking up, you will see mist floating down, pink through the air as it hits beams of light coming from the stage lights that shine down among the red velvet drapery that hung from the ceiling. The railing that ran behind the staircase served as the base for three life sized Greek looking plaster statues of human beings that looked like they were crumbling before your eyes. And there were lights situated behind them, so that from the front, halos of light were shining out from behind them. 

A number of different stories started on this grand staircase. One of them, one of my favorites, is called "Ligeia." "Ligeia" is a story of a man who is madly in love with is wife. When his wife dies, he remarries. Soon he realizes that he hates his second wife. She becomes ill, and though he can barely look at her, he begins to  notice that her appearance begins to change as she retreats further and further into illness. But she doesn't look sicker and sicker, instead she begins to look more and more like his first wife, Ligeia. I won't tell you how the story ends, because if you haven't read this, I highly recommend it, I will, however, tell you how the actors performed this particular piece. 

I feel like I need to explain that none of these performances are direct representations of the short stories. While they embody the essence of the story, they have been reworked so that they work in performance. None of Poe's short stories have stage directions, or instruction on how a person might perform them in scenes, so what the actors performed was inspired by the feelings and emotions present in the original stories. This is my best shot at what "Ligeia" looked like:

The scene took place inside a large room that was furnished like a bedroom in an old manor house, maybe even a castle. When I walked into the room, I was overcome with a smell like that you might find in a vintage clothing store. It smelled like old fabric, like sour perfume that had come from bottles long dried up, like formaldehyde and must, like memories expressed in Daguerrotypes. 

To the left of the door was a massive bed, raised up, a four poster with a canopy and an old foggy mirror, quite long, the served as a headboard. When I walked into the room, the audience was standing in a circle around the two actors who were performing this story, one man and one woman. The young woman stood, immobile and ridged. Her curly red hair was pinned up, she wore a once white, now yellowed victorian dress with a high color and ripped shoulder seems, and it appeared that rigormortis had already set in. Standing in front of her was a young man. He wasn't too tall, but lean, in dress pants, white gauzy shirt and suspenders. His long dirty blonde hair was combed back, but it was bound to fall into his face eventually. He was moving and very much alive. 

These two, one live, the other seemingly not, danced. But since she was performing the part of a character who could not move, it was her partner's job to make sure that she could follow his lead. He, essentially, moved every part of her body. He articulated her  joint, bent her arms at the elbows when he needed too, and did the same with her legs, leaning into her knees. When her knees were locked, he rocked her from side to side. The effect was almost as if she was a stool, rocking back and forth from leg to leg. Yes, her whole body appeared to be made of wood. But the effect was incredible. Not once was she responsible for the movement of her own body. The whole time she was completely rigid. 

But nevertheless they danced. He picked her up, moved her around. Her face sometimes moved, making it seem like she was conscious and stuck in a body that should could neither control or get out of. While she was not moving, if this piece had a star, she would have been it. 

Part of the piece was performed on the bed, a necessary cushion for the sort of acrobatics that ensued. After laying her down to sleep, this man decided to try to rouse her from her trance, or sleep, or death. 

In his attempt to bring her back from wherever it was that she had gone, this man rolled her around, lifted her up, threw her into pillows. It looked like some sort of angry floor routine from the gymnastic section of the Olympic Games. She never moved a muscle, but every one of her muscles was contracted. The muscles in her arms, her neck, her legs were tense. Her toes were even twisted up. 

And she wasn't even breathing hard. 

He was completely out of breath, but (and I was looking specifically to see if it would) her diaphragm stayed perfectly still. 

Well, once he finally gave up, conceded defeat, and left the room, she woke up. And she wasn't happy. She awoke with what I would describe as the epitome of a blood-curdling scream. 

Okay! I'll stop there for now, and I'll tell you more about it next time.