If any play is a complete 180º polar opposite of the safe suburban outdoor Shakespeare I reviewed most recently, it is certainly B. Stanley and company’s inscrutable, frustrating, and nearly successful devised piece The Accidental Pilgrim at DCAC, a satellite production of the 2018 Capital Fringe Festival.
I could call it “decidedly obtuse” and “abstract,” but they beat me to it in their own show description. An unnamed everyman protagonist (Jerry Herbilla) wanders through streets and meadows and into a remote train station on his way to Cassel, where job prospects await him, and where “it’s” at. He’s warned by the bowler hat bearing station attendant that “it” isn’t there. As one might expect, he’s soon stripped of his ticket and bag, as well as the hands on the station’s overhead clock, and he wanders into an increasingly avant-garde journey of cryptic, psychedelic, allegorical self-discovery like Alice down the rabbit hole.
I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t my metier, improv-developed nonlinear avant-garde multimedia Grotowski-influenced largely dialogue-free mime-heavy performance art isn’t exactly my stock in trade, but this is Fringe and this is exactly the sort of experimental, boundary-pushing, risk-taking show one would expect to see. This is, from what I can gather, very much Theatre Du Jour’s metier.
Inasmuch as I am capable of evaluating such a piece, I can’t escape the notion that the show is underdeveloped. The various scenes seem to be stretched past necessity and dance on the edge of tedium, as do the lengthy film sequences linking them. At just under an hour, it is simultaneously overlong and not long enough, as it seemed there was more story yet to tell. Alice was still mid-tumble down the rabbit hole. There were definitely intriguing moments, a Mummenschanz-inspired box-mask sequence in particular, and the sound and music collages of Nate Taylor & Rob Gould are also impressive.[ezcol_1third]
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The Accidental Pilgrim
closes July 29, 2018
Details and tickets
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It’s hard for me to evaluate the performance of the actors; I’ve never seen them in anything else, most of them only seem to work with this company, as their interest in avant-garde and movement-oriented theatre perhaps pigeonhole them. I’d be intrigued to see how they handle more conventional material, but until then I reserve judgement.
Still it’s hard not to root for Theatre Du Jour; they’ve been around longer than many theatremakers in DC have been alive (36 years), perpetually under the radar. And for a Friday night in Adams Morgan during peak Fringe, the fact that they played to an audience of five was a shame. Maybe the issue that kept most of NW and NE under boil-your-water alert kept the streets clear. In any case, c’mon folks, it’s only an hour. If this is your cup of tea, great; if not, with a 7:30 curtain it’s still daylight out when it’s done and you have the whole evening ahead of you.
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The Accidental Pilgrim, devised by Theatre Du Jour, directed and designed by B. Stanley, sound design by Nate Taylor & Rob Gould. Ensemble: Jerry Herbilla, Jacquelyn Paulin, Rachel Reed, Kris Roth, Annetta Dexter Sawyer. Stage Manager/Technician: Amanda Williams. A production of Theatre Du Jour. Presented as part of Capital Fringe Festival 2018 . Reviewed by John Geoffrion
