Photo Credit: Andy Walsh
Dystopian stories can seem removed from our society: 1984 was written in 1948, Brave New World came out in 1932 and Fahrenheit 451 in 1955; which is why Quasimondo Physical Theatre and Cooperative Performance offered an updated, more modern take on the latter. The play, named Celsius 232, premiered in the North Milwaukee Arthaus, a former fire station turned theater.
In a future where firemen start fires to get rid of books, Guy Montag (Ben Yela) is a fireman who slowly develops critical thinking skills after meeting an energetic girl (Jessi Miller). Dark humor and physical comedy are the play’s methods of choice. With surprisingly little dialogue, the actors manage to convey a grim image of a society devoid of depth. It can be initially off-putting to see the heavy-geared firemen doing slapstick comedy, accompanied simply by sound effects. In fact, it gives the play a cartoonish aspect, reinforced by the fact it downright uses Looney Toons music.
Directors Brian Rott and Don Russell conceived many tricks to hold up the farce, such as clown noses worn by the shills of society, a decor covered in torn up book pages, a doctored portrait of Benjamin Franklin wearing a fireman hat and well thought-out light and sound effects. The hound, a mechanical creature which hunts down criminals, is shockingly well rendered as well, all in cardboard, metal and LEDs—more surprisingly, it can be worn by an actor, in an impressive display of resourcefulness.
Creativity is aplenty in Celsius 232; most of the pleasure of watching it derives from curiosity, a desire to find out what clever set up the team uses next. That creativity expresses itself best in secondary characters, most of which—like the woman who uses crutches as stilts or the stomach pumpers—are simply delightful to watch. The play truly shines most with Guy’s wife, Mildred (Ben Ludwig), who is played by a drag queen whose stage talents include songwriting and singing, and who delivers a chilling final song.
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The original book by Ray Bradbury was a cautionary tale against government censorship, written in the wake of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings and McCarthyism; Celsius 232, on the other hand, feels more at home in the era of social media and video games. It takes place in a world where the people are the ones who chose to give up complex thoughts, favoring mindless entertainment and mass media instead. The play is peppered with modern references, such as citizens not knowing what their president’s platform is but liking him because “he says it like it is” and “he wants to make our country great again.”
Beatty (Kirk Thomsen), Montag’s boss, drives the point home with a thought-provoking, depressing monologue that may sound familiar to many Americans today: Society rotted on its own, people don’t want to think, they just want entertainment to numb the pain of their unfulfilling jobs. That is the terrible truth.
