June 2010 Theatre Review by Lawrence Bommer
Fuerza Bruta Look Up
This 65-minute promenade production from Argentina is all about being surprised in a packed crowd. The subtitle to “Brute Force”--“Look Up”—is there for good reason. From the moment the 888 audience members clamber onto the smoke-filled Auditorium Theatre stage they enter a world where a running man on a rapid treadmill encounters a wind machine, Styrofoam walls to crash through and assorted props that materialize in an instant and disappear as fast, and people who speed by him as they leap into a hidden safety mat.
A rolling cutaway house discloses a cramped apartment where the inhabitants squabble, tear down the walls and then erupt in a joyous breakout dance that inspires the audience to join the impromptu rave. Selective spectators get their heads gently smashed with breakaway panels. A shimmering silver curtain is pulled across the stage and suspended dancers “walk” across it at right angles while the colors surge like a rainbow on acid. The most stupendous event, the signature for this show, comes when a huge transparent swimming pool is lowered to within touching distance of the crowd. Through its plastic bottom the crowd glimpses nymphs cavorting through the sliding waves, slamming themselves as they skid across the pool, and creating delicate images recalling water babies discovering the ocean for the first time.
Impressive and amazing, yes, but for all its forced and frenetic activity “Fuerza Bruta” remains a curiously passive experience, the audience reacting and the performers overacting with an almost stereotypically Argentinian excess. Where’s a slow tango when you need it? There’s a strange disconnect between their anarchy and our comparatively subdued observation. Yes, this is cutting-edge craziness wedded to a flurry of special effects that are astonishingly original and beautifully dreamlike. But there’s nothing here that’s all that dramatically different from “Stomp.” Call it “Splash” but don’t assume that “Fuerza Bruta” is the last word in interactive meta-theater for the tragically hip. Broadway In Chicago presents "Fuerza Bruta: Look Up" through July 11, 2010 at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University.
About Lawrence Bommer
A
native Chicagoan, Lawrence Bommer has been an active free-lance
writer and playwright since 1975. For twenty years he wrote a
weekly column, "Opening Nights" for the Friday section of
the Chicago Tribune, where he also regularly contributed theater
criticism and feature writing. His work has appeared in
Stagebill, the Pulitzer-Lerner newspapers and The Advocate.
Mr. Bommer was theater editor for the Windy City Times since its founding until 1999; from 1986 a theater critic for the Chicago Reader (where he has also written for the "Calendar" and "Our Town" sections); Chicago Free Press, where he was contributing editor until the paper’s demise in spring 2010; Chicago Footlights, where he has been a regular contributor; and Plays International, where he is the Chicago correspondent. He has also contributed to the Hollywood Reporter, PerformInk, Screen Magazine, CitySearch, the Chicago Illini, Inside Chicago, Illinois Entertainer, the International Theatre Festival of Chicago newsletter, Plays International, CitySearch, Playbill Online, TheatreMania, CurtainUp.com and Chicago Enterprise. Mr. Bommer is a three-time finalist for a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in the "arts criticism" category. In 1991 he became a regular theater and, dance critic and arts writer for the Chicago Tribune. His commentary has also aired on LesBiGay Radio, WGN and on Milwaukee Public Radio.
As a playwright, Mr. Bommer's work has been produced in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Madison and, in Chicago, by the Organic Theater Company (Jonathan Wild [1979], Poe [1980]. Gulliver's Last Travels [1993] and by Lionheart Gay Theatre (Gunsel, The Tyrannicides, Killers and Comrades). Since 1976 Mr. Bommer has taught at the Francis W. Parker School and was a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1969 to 1975 (where he received his Master's degree in English), as well as a guest lecturer at the College of DuPage, Roosevelt University, DePaul University and the University of Chicago. Mr. Bommer is a member of the American Theater Critics Association and has been a member of the National Writers Union and the Dramatists Guild.