LOVE AND INFORMATION


Eight actors play over a hundred characters in four dozen mostly comedic vignettes over the course of a briskly moving seventy-five minutes in Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, the provocative, mind-blowing latest from Antaeus Theatre Company.

The first of Churchill’s dozens of characters is persuaded at long last to share secrets with a romantic partner, with regretful consequences. Another is concerned about giving away too much personal data when responding to a census questionnaire. Yet another surfs social media to learn as much as possible about a crush.

A pair of interrogators chat about their current torture victim, no matter whether said info is true or not. Animal experimenters discuss a procedure designed to reveal information about how the brain responds to memory.

Another character, one whose head is “too full of stuff,” decides to give up all attempts to fall asleep and go on Facebook instead. Another is dismayed to be in a place with no TV, Internet, phone reception, or even a radio to stay informed.

These are just the first fourteen of the dozens upon dozens of characters brought to vivid, distinctive life by John Apicella, Anne Gee Byrd, Darius De La Cruz, Kwana Martinez, Kevin Matsumoto, Erin Pineda, Lloyd Roberson II, and Zoe Yale as they attempt to understand and process the onslaught of information that’s become instantly available to anyone with a cell phone or laptop in this age of revolutionary technology.

It’s a heady concept, but hardly a surprising one coming from the playwright who gave Antaeus two of its most dizzyingly “out there” productions: 2014’s Top Girls and 2016’s Cloud 9.

Churchill composes each scene as nothing more than a series of sentences. She gives not a single character description or stage direction. She provides no punctuation. no names, nothing about age, race, gender, or sexual orientation. In other words, Zero. Zilch. Zip.

Fortunately for Antaeus audiences, these are challenges that director Emily Chase aces in the most thrilling of ways, eliciting dozens of razor-sharp performances from a multiracial cis-and-transgender cast ranging in age from 20something to 70-plus.

Not only that, but Chase intersperses live performances (including crackerjack work by Matsumoto on guitar and Apicella on ukulele) with prerecorded projected sequences as characters interact via Facetime or Zoom, an inspired choice entirely fitting our shared experiences over the past three years.

Considering the sheer number of vignettes that make up Love And Information, even attentive theatergoers might be hard-pressed to compile more than a partial list of what they’ve seen, but don’t let that stop you from experiencing this uniquely Churchillian ride, one made even more exciting by the production’s all-star design team.

Scenic designer Frederica Nascimento’s stark but effective playing area features not much more than a single sofa and a few pieces of movable furniture, but it’s one that allows Chase and her actors to achieve split-second scene changes from locale to locale, with costume designer Angela Balogh Calin providing a profusion of character-defining looks and properties designer Katie Iannitello giving them almost as many knick-knacks to handle.

Christine Ferriter’s striking lighting and John Zalewski’s dramatic original music and sound effects add to the excitement throughout, with projection designer Ly Eisenstein and cinematographer Apicella joining creative forces in quite possibly the most mind-bending projection-video display you’ll see all year.

Kaite Brandt is assistant director. Carly DW Bones is intimacy coordinator. Lauren Lovett-Cohen is dialect coach. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

Karen Osborne is production stage manager and Jessica Osorio is assistant stage manager.

Those accustomed to linear storylines or even just a cohesive plot might find themselves tempted to pass on a play entirely lacking in either of these elements, but they’d be wrong to succumb to that temptation.

As vertiginous an evening of live theater as any playgoer could wish for, Love and Information is Antaeus at its most risk-takingly satisfying.

Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center, 110 East Broadway, Glendale.
www.Antaeus.org

–Steven Stanley
March 3, 2023
Photos: Jenny Graham

 

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