What if you knew the truth but refused to believe it, even if denial meant certain death? Kitchen Dog Theater's latest production, the regional premiere of Swiss playwright Max Frisch's prescient 1958 absurdist comedy The Arsonists, sparks a low flame under that question and lets it sizzle for a couple of hours. Then BOOM comes the answer. You won't be surprised at the concussive conclusion. The truth was right there all the time.
Kitchen Dog has been on a hyper-reality kick lately with plays like the recent family drama Thinner than Water, which felt like a long holiday dinner with relatives you despise, and the teacher-in-trouble play Gidion's Knot, which felt like after-school detention. The Arsonists has more in common with Barbecue Apocalypse, the antic dystopian comedy by Dallas playwright Matt Lyle that closed out KDT's last season.
The Arsonists is a tougher and more cryptic piece than Lyle's (better) play, but it's good, the kind of heady material that's best interpreted in live theater by actors who really know what they're doing. As directed by company member Tim Johnson, Kitchen Dog's cast and designers, plus Dallas composer-pianist Jon Schweikhard, more than meet the challenge of a difficult script (a new translation by British satirist Alistair Beaton that debuted at London's Royal Court Theatre in 2011).
Frisch's vintage material lends itself easily to modern interpretations. If it was intended as an attack on bourgeois attitudes or the nuclear proliferation of the 1950s, now it could be a parable about global climate change. Maybe it's a jab at the heartless greed of the ultra-rich — today's 1-percenters being even more wildly, callously wealthy than their '50s counterparts — or an allegory about the rise of incurable disease, the threat of terrorism or the corporate takeover of democracy. This play casts many runes. Read them as you will.
The theme is fire and the first act begins with a small chorus led by Rhonda Boutté, all dressed in firemen's garb and helmets (costumes by Giva Taylor), singing and dancing a jaunty tune full of dire warnings about an approaching conflagration. (All the music for this production was created by Schweikhard, who accompanies the chorus from a cubbyhole under the bi-level set.)
A dapper businessman enters. Gottlieb Biedermann (Max Hartman, wearing a smart goatee so right for the role) addresses the audience: "It's not easy these days, lighting a cigarette." And then he does that, taking a few puffs before his maid (Jenny Ledel) tells him he has a visitor. Everybody smokes in this play, even the fire chief.
Enter a mysterious behemoth named Schmitz (Jason Kane), head smooth as a melon, bare arms slick as hams. He says he's homeless and wants a meal and a place to stay. A bit of bread and cheese would suffice, he tells the maid. And maybe some tomatoes. And don't forget the mustard. Gottlieb can't seem to say no to the pushy intruder, so he lets him sleep in the attic. That concerns wife Babette (Karen Parrish), who's scared that Schmitz might be one of the arsonists responsible for all the fires being set all over the city.
"He's not an arsonist," Gottlieb tells Babette.
"How can you tell?" she asks.
"I asked him."
Overnight Schmitz acquires a roommate, a former waiter named Eisenring (Michael Federico), fresh out of prison for, what else, burning down a restaurant. They fill the attic with barrels of gasoline and detonating devices. This barely concerns Gottlieb, who accepts their idiotic explanations and waves off Babette's fears. The men keep telling their host they're not arsonists, so they can't be arsonists. Willful ignorance suits Gottlieb just fine.
The pace of The Arsonists has that halting, anxiety-producing quality of Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist or Ionesco's The Rhinoceros. Nothing much happens, then lots of things do. Characters talk in circles. Lines are repeated like mantras. Thank goodness the goofy chorus (Ian Ferguson, Joshua Kumler, Chris Sykes and Boutté) keeps popping up, Keystone Kops-style, in unexpected places on designer Jeffrey Schmidt's sprawling scenery. There are hidden doors in that polka-dotted floor; the dots are echoed in Babette's blouse and Gottlieb's pocket square.
This isn't a play that will be a runaway hit or audience favorite. Reviewed on the first Saturday performance, the house was barely half full. But with so much mainstream mush on local boards — Driving Miss Daisy, Dallas Theater Center? Really? — The Arsonists is worth a look for the carefully calibrated work of its actors. Hartman, one of KDT's top leading men, nails the bluster and biliousness of clueless Biedermann. As Babette, Parrish screws up her face and flashes her eyes to react with comic horror to the doorbells and clock chimes that punctuate her scenes. She's Carol Burnett as Norma Desmond.
Federico and Kane create moments of light comedy as the play's pair of heavies. Their timing has a hint of vaudeville shtick with an undercurrent of evil. Nice work by both. As the maid, Jenny Ledel imbues her character with a back story we're only vaguely aware of, as if there's a fight going on downstairs and she's barely got time to deal with serving drinks and dinner. This is what good actors do: Bring more than is on the page to make a play interesting.
The Arsonists takes its sweet time lighting the fuse. It's Kitchen Dog's dynamite talent that makes it explosively entertaining.
