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Friday, November 30, 2001

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

They're back! After a sojourn in New York, Pittsburgh's own Squonk Opera -- the funny, smart performance band of your brightly fevered dreams -- is back on stage at City Theatre, unveiling "Burn," their most coherent artistic journey yet.

		Stage Review SQUONK OPERA'S 'BURN' WHERE: CITY THEATRE, BINGHAM AND 13TH STREETS, SOUTH SIDE. WHEN: THROUGH DEC. 23, TUES.-FRI. 8 P.M., SAT. 5:30 AND 9 P.M., SUN. 2 P.M. TICKETS: $21-$32 ($15 SENIOR, $10 STUDENT); 412-431-CITY.

Let's get this straight, right off: "Burn" is inventive, layered fun. It's a surreal dreamscape, alternately sweet, silly, satiric, portentous, clunky (the acting) and cool. An entertaining cross between a Kennywood outing, an eccentric opera and an interactive video installation, it's a 70-minute visual and musical geekathon that scurries back and forth between many levels.

That said, you're best advised just to sit back and let it happen. Feast on the props and sets, dream along with the music, laugh at the puns, enjoy the conjunction of live and video ... and puzzle over obscurities only in passing. Enjoy.

I, however, am one of those interpreter-geeks who tries to figure things out, so don't let what follows squelch your pleasure.

Best enjoyed as a dreamscape, "Burn" is actually just that, its structure based on one of the most famous dreams in literature, the "Inferno" (Hell) section of Dante's 700-year-old epic, "The Divine Comedy." The evening's content, however, comes mainly from the tragi-satiric travails of Centralia, Pa., where a deep coal-seam fire has burned since 1962, creating a ghost town on the surface.

Just as Dante Alighieri meets his Roman forebear, Virgil, who serves as his guide (proving that Dante is really more interested in the poetic journey than the theological), so in "Burn" Don Alegurski meets Virgie, a sweet singer who conducts his return to Centralia, his old hometown. Don's descent takes him though a carefully charted nine circles, simultaneously the levels of Dante's Hell and the concentric circles drawn to map the degrees (pun) of Centralia's devastation. (The theater program lists the circles and prints the map; apparently it originated under the infamous James Watt, which suggests that his Interior Department staff was either less educated or a lot wittier than you'd expect.)

As Don (Dave Macarchick) and Virgie (Jody Abbott) descend backward through time, Don merges with his youthful self (John O'Neill) who grew up at the center of this hell. The circles correspond to places in and about Centralia -- Ziggy's BBQ, Town Hall, the tunnel mouth. A Pennsylvania river becomes the Styx that circled classical Hades; Centralia dogs are simultaneously the hellhound, Cerebus. Drifting in and out of Don's journey is the luminous Pale Mary (Jackie Dempsey), her bridal gown lit from beneath; erupting in and out are Bob Biggi (Steve O'Hearn), Centralia politician, and Wilbert Milenka (Kevin Kornicki), real estate agent, who lead opposing sides in the battle over the town's fate.

The story is told through simultaneous video and live action, which seem to interpenetrate. Further videos, some live, are projected on cutouts, actors or side walls. We join Don's journey.

Each circle has its music. With Abbott's (Virgie) high, haunting voice and Dempsey's atmospheric rhythms and tones, it's reminiscent of Laurie Anderson or (I'm told) Tori Amos or Kate Bush. You won't get much of Abbott's and Dempsey's minimal lyrics (they're included in the program), but it doesn't matter: Feeling is all.

Sooner than we'd wish, Don hits bottom/center/home, and the journey suddenly concludes. This is my main dissatisfaction with "Burn," an ending that is not so much inconclusive as abrupt. Artistically, we want something more.

Metaphorically, though, I understand it, because there's another level to "Burn." To Dante and Centralia, add Squonk Opera itself, which has also returned home. "Burn" has to be inconclusive because their full story is still to be written. And that's true in Dante, too: "Inferno" is only one-third of "The Divine Comedy," leading to "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso."

In Squonk mythology, the ninth circle must represent their experience a year and a half ago on Broadway. Off-Broadway, they'd been greeted with the praise heaped on primitivist-sophisticates, but when they moved uptown (which in this cosmography means deeper into the belly of the beast) they met ignorance, perfidy and abuse, not to mention the sudden shriveling up of their savings. It must have seemed like a firestorm. "Burn" might double as their curse on those responsible.

Fortunately, after licking their wounds, things are looking up. And that's precisely what happens in "Inferno." Having reached Satan in that ninth circle, Dante and Virgil push deeper and discover they're looking upward. Presto -- Purgatory! Or, in Squonk's case, Pittsburgh! And indeed there are plans for future national tours -- Paradise, perhaps.

Anyway, all we care is that Squonk is home.

And they've grown. For "Burn," they've enlisted the creative participation of a small horde. But at the center remains the band itself, all of whom also act, often while playing music: Dempsey (piano, accordion), O'Hearn (flute, Tyrolean trumpet, wind synthesizer and even occasional props), Kornicki (percussion), Abbott (vocals) and Nathan Fay (electric and double bass).

Composer Dempsey is a revelation as Pale Mary. In her white gown, she's the most natural stage presence in the group -- creamy, coolly voluptuous and funny. You can hardly take your eyes off her, or your ears, as she pours forth fluent melody on accordion (silvery bride as polka goddess) or piano (Mary, Mother of Music).

O'Hearn is appropriately klutzy as Biggi, the sort of man you know is lying but whose lies are so awkward they don't seem a threat, which probably makes him even more dangerous. Kornicki is clunkier still and seems right at home in Centralia. Kudos to young O'Neill, a natural presence.

As Dempsey adds composing to performing, O'Hearn adds design, one of Squonk's greatest strengths. Funny props and puppets extend his set, a dream of anthracite featuring a huge spinning mirror/coal face, which also becomes the video screen. For the video, the equivalent of several short movies, credit Chas Marsh. There's a dramatically mottled light design by Bob Steineck, additional writing by David Petersen and other contributions too numerous to list.

Necessarily, there's plenty of technical direction -- the appealing amateur feel can't hide the size of the undertaking. But there's no stage director credited, a lack they might reconsider.

How do I feel about Squonk Opera? Much as I did about Brockett and Barbara: You're not really a Pittsburgher unless you know their work.