MAKE THEATRE POETIC AGAIN: In Jerry Lieblich’s The Barbarians, wordplay gets political
Anne Gridley in the role of Fake Madam Fake President in The Barbarians.
The Oxford Dictionary defines a malapropism as “a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with unintentionally amusing effects, as in, for example, ‘dance a flamingo’ (instead of flamenco).” Slips of the tongue may come off as clumsiness, but sometimes the wrong bird is the more effective one. Excuse me—the wrong word.
Malapropisms are everywhere in Jerry Lieblich’s The Barbarians, directed by Paul Lazar, which recently closed at La MaMa. They shoot out into the audience like rapid machine gun fire, and some may find it tempting to duck for cover (but not this writer). Example: when characters arrive at their high-security workplace—where they are developing a mysterious prototype—entrances are not “granted,” but “graham crackered” and “grandaded.” The effect is not unlike hearing a Shakespeare comedy, with the density of the language forcing you to really focus on what is being said. And, as with Shakespeare, the uninitiated may find it challenging to follow the story. Lieblich gleefully inserts rambling digressions into their characters’ inner lives—entertaining, but in open rebellion against the play’s overarching narrative. Nonetheless, I’ll attempt a synopsis.
A New Jersey laboratory (deliberately mispronounced like the bathroom) is the setting for much of the action. A group of scientists (Jess Barbagallo, Jennifer Ikeda, Naren Weiss) are hard at work on an invention that compels its manipulator to spew propaganda. We hear bits and pieces of familiar speeches—a greatest hits list of disgraceful presidential addresses: “In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation;” follows “I did not have sexual relations with that women;” after “They’re eating cats and dogs!” Wielding this unruly machine is taxing: one character nearly passes out after a round of agitating agitprop.
Meanwhile, an authoritarian “fake” president (Anne Gridley) is in search of a war to wage. Accompanying her is a conspiracy-minded assistant (also played by Claudel) who fans the flames of the president’s destructive impulses. The pair travel the stage in a dweeby-looking helicopter, like a war-mongering Dumb and Dumber, but then again, murderous autocrats have behaved like dunces since Caligula. The two plots collide (explosively) when the fake-president’s lust for conquest brings real-life consequences. Eventually, the scientists harness their invention to detonate language itself. Kaboom. Speech breaks down, and words no longer mean what they used to, but this being a Lieblich play, they never really did to begin with.
Steve Mellor, the story’s fearless narrator, commands an unmatched facility over the challenging text. His frequent digressions—which include a recurring South Park-like exchange between a cigarette butt and piece of dogshit, enacted with larger-than-life props—were among the play’s most memorable moments, and I found myself more attuned to these bizarre arias than some of the ensemble scenes. Perhaps this is because Leiblich, who is also a poet, is most inspired in the monologue form, with its ample opportunity for wordplay. Or maybe I am just especially drawn to Mellor as an actor—he amazed me last fall, starring in Leiblich’s even more linguistically taxing one-man play Mahinerator.
Amy Rubin’s striking set made use of every inch of the Ellen Stewart theatre’s cavernous space. All the pseudo-scientific tinkering occurred on a platform downstage left, behind it a banner-like backdrop rose to the ceiling, zigzagging beneath the rafters like a proscenium after a fender-bender. Excerpts from the presidential speeches were projected onto the banner, but the legibility of the text varied, and the words occasionally dissolved into static.
Lieblich’s writing is a dense web of puns, blunders, and ideas—the language demands more from the listener than a typical trip to the theatre, and sometimes you get caught in the trap. But the bawdy poop jokes belie a painstakingly rigorous approach to playwriting. More than anything, Lieblich’s idiosyncratic poetry exposes the absurdity of the language we encounter daily, especially online. Take the cats n’ dogs fragment: it felt especially poignant not because its originator currently occupies the Oval Office, but because it slipped so seamlessly into Lieblich’s verbal labyrinth. I almost forgot they didn’t write that line—a reminder that politicized language inevitably erodes everyday speech. Like a mad scientist—or a presidential speechwriter—Lieblich dismantles English, then reassembles it, planting tripwires between the syllables.
