Playwright: Stephen Taylor
At: House Productions at The Viaduct, 3111 N. Western Ave.
Phone: (773) 251-2195; $10-$19
Runs through: Oct. 16
Ensemble ethos and billing order notwithstanding, the real stars of Cave With Man are its composer, Kevin O'Donnell, its choreographer, Tommy Rapley, and its playwright, Stephen Taylor. Why single out these three from the impressive talent to be found in this performance group? Because for this latest multiple-discipline exercise, they forge an entire LANGUAGE—from SCRATCH.
Granted, it's only as much language as needed to tell a fairly uncomplicated story: our hero, blinded in the course of protecting his tribe, is exiled. He is adopted by strangers, eventually establishing his own clan presence and acquainting the children thereof with his newly-invented system of NAMING things. After many adventures and much suffering, he is finally avenged on his enemy.
Well, what did you expect of a play set in prehistoric times—Tom Stoppard? The flaw in this House Production is not the simplicity of its story, however, but the hazards inherent in energetic young performers attempting to replicate an experience paralleling that of infant development. For every original idea—e.g. a woman whose 'name' is a melody—we endure juvenile giggles ('yuk' is the troglodyte word for 'dead', for example) as well as self-contained sequences like the protracted rap-dance whose ambiance of smug cutesiness grows quickly annoying. Indeed, even the most innovative moments—a duel pitting twin bucklers against Kali sticks, or an aural thundershower WE help conjure—are diminished by now-overworked images (those red silk 'blood' streamers lost their power to astonish several seasons ago).
None of this, understand, stops us from succumbing to Cave With Man's primal rhythm. (That's not a figure of speech—percussion instruments of all descriptions accompany the action, their volume fortuitously diluted by the magnitude of the Viaduct's Great Room.) Under the curiously laissez-faire direction of Nathan Allen, an athletic 15-member cast led by Matthew Hawkins as the patriarchal hero (with Carolyn Defrin as his sinister goat-helmed nemesis) generate Dionysic exuberance sufficiently seductive to draw us into the part-etymology
textbook/part-Zap Comix universe of a venture more smartly conceived than executed.