The Silent Treatment-Noir Style
Drawing on the Silent Movie and Film Noir styles, Irrational Robot Bureau presented the Lasalle Fragments, a live “performance” at the Pocket Theatre in the Greenwood neighborhood. Our seedy detective Casimire LaSalle, played by Robert Reidl, opens the play in silence with the first of many hung-over inner monologues played electronically for the audience to hear. As the evening progresses, he ends up in bars, in a Mercury Sedan, at a train station, in a room and back at his office/humble abode. Throughout the evening various pockets get picked, information gets stolen, he gets tortured and it all ends up back at the bar, where the characters finally speak lines from Bogie’s best detective films.
The period details were authentic-40’s music, fedora hats, broads lurking around, suspicious foreign men with mustaches. Director Adrian Cameron made an intelligent decision to stylize the violence in keeping with the impressionist treatment of the material, and also to save the audience, who sat very close, the unpleasantness of having to see it close up.
The show was short, 50 minutes, the music was great, although this sort of thing is not my cup of tea, the house was full and it was interesting.
The La Salle Fragments. Irrational Robot Bureau. Pocket Theatre, 8312 Greenwood Ave N. 8:30 pm. Sat. April 2nd. Tickets and Info https://thepocket.vbotickets.com/event/The_LaSalle_Fragments_Theater/12943