A little scary but funny, 'Vidpires'
is a deftly done look at culture
Theater review
By Mike Steele
March 24, 1998
Star Tribune Staff Writer
You confront amusing vampire greeters, efficient vampire ticketsellers and
an amiable vampire ticket-taker, all blank-eyed and earnestly leering, even
before you enter the Little Theater in the Hennepin Center for the Arts. You're
escorted by vampire types past ghoulish paintings into the auditorium, where
the stage is dominated by two languid marionettes swaying from strings in
half-light, discarded and dusty things jerking fitfully to re-create some
past performance.
These opening moments capture the moods of "Vidpires!" Kari Margolis
and Tony Brown's fuller, fleshier version of the fouryear-old show that introduced
the Margolis Brown Company to Minneapolis.
This is a spirited look at popular culture, at the way it sinks its teeth
into us; at the way it drains us of the blood of reality until the conventions
of TV and the movies become our reality, a sort of national entertainment
consciousness stronger than the world around us.
It's a funny, good-natured, sometimes even loving poke at pop culture, though
Rick Paul's Gothic scenery and Stephen Rueff's shadowy lighting add a decadent,
unsettling eeriness.
The piece has no text; it is presented solely through a stream of visual images
and movement metaphors. It centers on two vampires, the swooning siren Diphylla
(Margolis) and the longing Desmodus (Brown), looking like a silent-movie star
wearing tails decayed worse than he is. The essence of the show is their melodramatic
attempt to merge with the ethos of pop culture, thus to become immortal and
forever in love. In other words, they've been driven batty by overfeeding
on TV shows and old movies, never consummating their love because they can't
get beyond pop fantasies.
"Vidpires!" is filled with compelling imagery: the notion of capturing
death on video so a person's image never dies; a stunning scene in which everything
the two touch turns to dust; another in which they pick up a TV set and it
turns into so many wires and circuits; a bizarrely effective dance of the
coffin-bound in which seven vampires swirl around each other and escape into
the night.
It's also filled with incisive technological tricks, magic, stage illusion
and imagination. For instance, Brown plays a gypsy violin with a TV screen
propped between his neck and shoulder that's showing a video of a violin being
played. A sequence of famous Hollywood kisses is projected against two naked
bodies as if to test whether the images or the bodies are more sensual or
whether they become so entwined they can't be differentiated. During a bombardment
of game-show images, Margolis grabs the TV screen, peels off an especially
aggravating winner and crumbles him at her feet.
The two vampires even intrude into the screen themselves, becoming images
of the silver screen - Valentino, Theda Bara, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
All these episodes are deftly done by the ensemble of nine, which is fully
in sync with the kinetic rhythms of the production.
"Vidpires!" ends with the entire company engaged in a perpetual
dance of love - spinning through a world where cultural illusion subsumes
yearning and desire. It's a little scary when you think about it, but hugely
entertaining while watching it.
Vidpires
- Who: Created by Kari Margolis and Tony Brown, performed by the Margolis
Brown Company.
- Where: Little Theatre, second floor of Hennepin Center for the Arts, 528
HennepinAv., Minneapolis.
- When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays, through April 26.
- Tickets: $18 and $20. 339-6387.
- Review: This good-humored look at the way pop culture gets into our bloodstreains
is presented with great humor and technical dazzle.
