_Five in the Morning_ by Rotozaza

I went this past Friday night to the Salvage Vanguard Theater to see Five in the Morning, a play by the London-based company Rotozaza. The performance was part of the fourth annual Fuse Box Festival in Austin.

Three actors (two women and a man) in bathing suits follow commands given by unseen actors (three different voices, distinct female voices for each female actor, and a male voice commanding the male actor). These commanding voices are amplified, and I suspect that they're pre-recorded. The play seems deliberately to make the audience wonder about this, however. At first the actors pause awkwardly and look confused after the commands are given, as if they have no previous knowledge of what commands they will receive. The impression the actors seem to be aiming for is of regular people thrust into this situation of being compelled to do something against their will (or at least something they are not prepared for). They are asked to do things like assume a static position that reveals "everything about you" (I'm [mis]quoting from memory); or the man and one of the women are asked to figure out how he can take her into his arms and hold her as if she is a ball. It could be very interesting if the show were to change these opening moments for each performance (I say opening moments because later it becomes clear that at least some sections of the show must be rehearsed). But the actors seem a little too studied in their hesitations and embarrassment on hearing certain commands. They are acting as if they are not acting.

A certain amount of awkwardness, then, is part of the act. And this makes it a challenge to evaluate the actors. At first I thought they were not very good--an amateur improv team, I found myself thinking, could do this stuff better than these folks. But one of the effects of the play is an uneasiness with what is going on. There is a clever sequence in which the actors are asked to form a human tower, which works out fine in the first instance when the man and the larger woman are on the bottom, supporting the small actress on top. But the voices then reposition the people so that the small woman is to be on the bottom of a vertical tower (so that the two other actors would need to be on top of her). The small actress's arms shake and become red from the effort of supporting the man (the taller actress never completely mounts the top of this unsteady tower). The actor's body seems to be under some genuine strain, and the audience must become involved at this moment, hoping the actress does not get hurt, even if if knows by this point that the cast has done these moves before.

Another impressive, somewhat earlier, moment is responsible for the audience's awareness of the pre-meditation of this all. The male and one of the female actors fight over a towel while the other female actor does increasingly complex movements involving touching her hand to her knee, chin, shoulder, etc. The commands become successively faster, with less and less time between command and compliance, until voice and corresponding action are nearly simultaneous. The timing is impressive, and the effect is particularly striking since the play has gradually led up to this convergence, earlier making you wonder if the actors know what is coming. When finally actor and voice match up, there is a slight surprise in finding out that the actor can now anticipate what is to be said.

It is an interesting play. The actors were not particularly talented, I thought (the tall woman was probably the best, especially in a scene where she starts walking toward the audience, her voice gradually taking over for the amplified voice that has been feeding her her lines, and challenges the audience by staring straight at them and questioning their role in all of this; the man was probably the weakest, not succeeding very well in a moment when he is supposed to crack under the pressure of following the voice's every command). But the concept was smart, and the various scenes--separated by darkness and a very loud sound of rushing water that sounds as if a microphone had been placed at the bottom of a waterfall--fit together nicely into a whole. The ideas of vulnerable actors, disembodied voices issuing commands, and disconnected scenes taking place in a vaguely distopian post-modern setting (the characters here are in "Aquaworld") are not new, but the young company pulled them off with enthusiastic flair.