STAGE FRIGHTS
By:
November 1, 2024
One in a series of occasional detours from Adam McGovern’s irregularly scheduled column OFF-TOPIC.
It would be almost impossible to describe feejee mermaid without giving away too much of what happens, except that I don’t really have any idea what happened. In the spirit of the famous hoax-artifact of the title and like all master hucksters of America’s theatrical heritage, the playwright and players keep you watching while making you unsure what you just saw.
A locked-room contest of wills and wits a la ’70s psychodramas like Sleuth and Deathtrap, the enclosure in this case is a Milwaukee hotel room that the protagonists all entered of their own free will. We’re at a national taxidermy contest, which you’d think is a fertile Halloween-season source for the macabre, but in the play’s first sleight of hand the petty rivalries and static shoptalk start out pretty much tracking with any other conventioneers’ banalities; a sly authorial emulation of their stuffed clients.
The temperature does rise with the pressure among the participants. Packed into the room are aspirants and mentors, jilted and unrequited lovers, all trying to settle scores or psych out their opponents for the next day’s judging. Beside their gruesome occupation, they’re not much more the “dark side” of your standard unscripted reality series about dogshows or kids’ dance competitions than was already there in the originals, and the play makes us reflect on how, erm, life-like any of that stuff is either. Illusion is each character’s trade, on or off the fake-animal stand, and an utterly committed and convincing cast makes us unable to look away even as the baggage aired veers between bathos and the bloodcurdling.
At least one unthinkable application of the taxidermist’s art is proposed along the way (think artists’ desire for immortality, plus the ability to achieve a semblance of it), and the plot eventually bends around a horrifying punchline involving the extent of one ambitious taxidermist’s goal to use their “godlike” gifts of life and simulation. I saw it coming, and then the play deftly seeds doubt as to whether there was anything to see. Having twirled you down a rabbit hole that has you more admiring of the plot twists than concerned with where they lead, the play achieves a perfect portrait of that distinctly Trump-era personality that cares much more about how well it can fool you than with how much it resolves.
[For more mystery: Drops in the Vase]
MORE POSTS by ADAM McGOVERN: OFF-TOPIC (2019–2024 monthly) | textshow (2018 quarterly) | PANEL ZERO (comics-related Q&As, 2018 monthly) | THIS: (2016–2017 weekly) | PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HELL, a 5-part series about characters in McGovern’s and Paolo Leandri’s comic Nightworld | Two IDORU JONES comics by McGovern and Paolo Leandri | BOWIEOLOGY: Celebrating 50 years of Bowie | ODD ABSURDUM: How Felix invented the 21st century self | KOJAK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: FAWLTY TOWERS | KICK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JACKIE McGEE | NERD YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JOAN SEMMEL | SWERVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRO and THE LEON SUITES | FIVE-O YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JULIA | FERB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: KIMBA THE WHITE LION | CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: WASHINGTON BULLETS | KLAATU YOU: SILENT RUNNING | CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: QUINTET | TUBE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: HIGHWAY PATROL | #SQUADGOALS: KAMANDI’S FAMILY | QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: LUCKY NUMBER | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JIREL OF JOIRY | KERN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Data 70 | HERC YOUR ENTHUSIASM: “Freedom” | KIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Captain Camelot | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Full Fathom Five | A 5-part series on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos | Reviews of Annie Nocenti’s comics Katana, Catwoman, Klarion, and Green Arrow | The curated series FANCHILD | To see all of Adam’s posts, including HiLo Hero items on Lilli Carré, Judy Garland, Wally Wood, and others: CLICK HERE