O’Brien’s ‘Voyage’ Hits an Impasse

Getting there — or, more to the point, not getting there — is supposed to be all the fun of “The Voyage of the Carcass.” Dan O’Brien tells two stories — one of a boat stranded in Arctic ice, the other of 30-somethings stuck in artistic and emotional paralysis.So it is fitting that, despite the sweaty exertions of its star, this laborious exercise in maximalism grinds to a dispiriting halt before it has barely begun.It is 1906, seven years into Bane Barrington’s failed expedition to the North Pole. (The Carcass is the name of the doomed boat.) All the sled dogs have been eaten, and only three explorers survive: Bane (the inexhaustible Dan Fogler),clad in a red clown nose and enormous fake buttocks; the mute first mate Israel (Noah Bean), and Eliza Kane (Kelly Hutchison), Bane’s fiancée, who is masquerading unbeknownst to him as the ship’s chaplain.As the power dynamics shift among the three, they entertain themselves with a standard assortment of post-Samuel Beckett shenanigans: snippets of vaudeville, baroque turns of phrase, goony slapstick sequences. “Things have grown tetchy. How long can this nacht stute endure?”You get the idea.Actually, perhaps you don’t: Out of nowhere, the lights shift and one of the characters calls for a 10-minute break. Suddenly we’re in a modern-day theater, as three old college buddies are working on a new play — or, more accurately, a therapeutic bit of play-acting for the failed clown Bill (Mr. Fogler again).Bill’s marriage to Helen (Ms. Hutchison) is on the skids, and the two have decided to recapture their passion by enlisting a playwright friend, Dan (Mr. Bean), to develop an experimental piece with them. What they hadn’t counted on is that Dan, who is recording the rehearsals and discussions as part of the “process”(a word that, along with “journey” and “voyage,” is repeated many times), is a predatory poseur with eyes for Helen. And so reality and fiction dovetail, with numerous forays into baggy-pants physical comedy and navel-gazing self-exploration.Both Mr. O’Brien, whose underrated high-school drama “The Dear Boy” had a brief off-Broadway run in 2005, and Mr. Fogler appear to be working out some issues here. Mr. Fogler, who followed his Tony-winning turn in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” with a series of roles in lowbrow Hollywood fare, has donned a sort of experimental-theater hair shirt, wrenching the action into a torrent of neo-Beckettian chaos.He capers around the stage with a seemingly limitless array of handstands, fart noises, operatic bits of singspiel, and other bits of theatrics. A handful of these distractions are successful, but as his material works less and less, he works more and more. The disconnect is exhausting to watch, and director Randy Baruh was either unwilling or unable to impose any sort of discipline on the proceedings.Mr. O’Brien, similarly, has eschewed the probing naturalism of his previous piece for a “toss everything onto the stage and see what sticks” approach. Unfortunately, very little sticks. The Arctic antics quickly grow tiresome — subjects like the techniques and motivations of actors are far more interesting to the actors themselves than to those watching them.Compared to the pinwheeling Mr. Fogler, the other two actors get by with what little oxygen is left in the room. While Mr. Bean is a bit at sea during the Arctic passages (a new character introduced at the end is disastrous), both he and Ms. Hutchison have a comfortable rapport in the contemporary material. In fact, she juggles the two styles with commendable finesse; the modern-day teeth-gnashing gets an occasional surge of plausible angst from Helen’s exasperation with herself, her marriage, and her slighted talents.It should be pointed out that a sizable percentage of the audience at a recent performance chose not to continue their own journey with ‘The Voyage of the Carcass”beyond intermission.Had they stayed, they would have seen … more of the same, although they did miss Mr. Bean stripping down to a fur-trimmed unitard as he is buffeted with white confetti to the strains of “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” (That confetti, meant to connote snow, eventually finds its way all over the lobby and the audience.)They also missed a rare high point in Bill’s lengthy, profane tirade against the American theater, from its Juilliard grads to its patrons to its “thorny social issues.” Like Edward Norton’s similar diatribe/love letter toward New York City in the Spike Lee film “The 25th Hour,” this speech has the lived-in specificity that bespeaks a deep-down affection for the form. Messrs. O’Brien and Fogler are clearly committed to giving the form a good shake and seeing what comes out. And if this sort of fiddling somehow paves the way for “The Dear Boy” or “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” fine and good. Voyages are unpredictable like that. In the future, though, the audience is best spared until the destination is actually in sight.Until November 12 (15 Vandam St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-691-1555).

O’Brien’s ‘Voyage’ Hits an Impasse

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