Theatre Gigante ‘The Lodger’
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927), the first memorable serial killer thriller, is a great exemplar of the art of silent cinema for telling a story without speech, sometimes dispensing with title-card words altogether. “The opening scene is crystal clear, all movement, like dance,” says Isabelle Kralj, dancer and co-artistic director of Theatre Gigante. “It’s so brilliant, watching how, in the first five minutes, the film pictorially pulls you into the story,” agrees Mark Anderson, monologuist and Gigante’s co-artistic director.
Theatre Gigante will host a screening of The Lodger with a performance by Little Bang Theory, playing their original score for the film on children’s instruments and (Gigante’s website promises) “a carload of toys.”
This will be Gigante’s fifth presentation with the Michigan trio. Their collaboration with the group’s principal composer, Frank Pahl, goes back even longer. “We tell people he’s our resident composer,” Kralj says. Other recently written scores for The Lodger have been heard, including Alloy Orchestra with Present Music at the 2003 Milwaukee International Film Festival, but this will be the Milwaukee premiere of Little Bang Theory’s addition to the repertoire.
Silent films have been included in previous Gigante seasons, including F.W. Murnau’s vampiric Nosferatu (1922), Lon Chaney’s Laugh Clown Laugh (1928) and Japanese director Teinosuke Kinugasa’s A Page of Madness (1926). “When I started the company in 1987, I wanted to treat artists the way I like to be treated,” Kralj says. “I have a wide range of things I like, and think are brilliant—and I want to bring them to the stage to share with audiences. Our productions have always been varied, from monologues to fragmented stories and hybrids with dance, video and music.”
“It’s extending the sense of who we are,” Anderson adds, commenting on Gigante’s refusal to live within one box. He describes Little Bang Theory’s score as “intense and delivered playfully,” a juxtaposition in line with The Lodger’s convergence of drama and comedy, eerie tension broken by jolts of violence. “If you haven’t seen the film, you may be surprised by the ending,” Kralj continues. “And then the last minute makes you think, ‘hmmm …’”
Theatre Gigante presents The Lodger with an original score performed by Little Bang Theory, 3 p.m. Sunday, March 10 at the Jan Serr Studio, 1925 E. Kenilworth Place, 6th Floor. For tickets, visit theatregigante.org.
