Banana & Bodice, along with their co-sponsors the Bay Area's Shotgun Players, have a reputation for creating the biggest spectacles you’ll ever see in a garage theater setting. Beowulf, which is one of the biggest budgeted and name-making shows for either company, constantly dazzles with its tech design, making your jaw drop in ways productions with ten times (or even movies with a thousand times) the budget cannot.
The tech overwhelms so much about this show that every other aspect of Beowulf has to catch up with director Rod Hipskind’s manic staging. The actors have been deftly prepped with a sense of comic timing, even when something goes wrong. The most difficult problem with this cast of no-names is the inconsistent singing talent, which ends up making the most personal musical instrument the weakest and most distracting. However, when the occasional actor belts out something fantastic, or when Craig belts out something preposterous as Beowulf, the play is at its best.
Where the show runs into real problems is its script, which, despite my expectations, did not meet the Urinetown-level sophistication of mixing high-intellect concepts with a low-intellect pop-cultural knowledge and sense of humor. The scenes where farcical professors try in vain to analyze Beowulf are completely vapid, and some better writing in these scenes could have lifted the play to another level. As it stands, this Beowulf is more about taking large concepts and turning them into vehicles for theatrical trickery and ridiculous stage antics.
That’s by no means the worst thing that could have come out of this show—Rocky Horror had a script that was no less idiotic. But the cult appeal of fighting monsters, filling tanks with blood, reenacting epic fights with action figures, and loud rock music trumps all else. As it stands, Beowulf won’t win any awards like Urinetown did, but it could be hell of a lot more popular among audiences that theater desperately needs. Broadway has already started to break through to the young with its plays of hope; now it’s time for the fringe to appeal to the young’s more diabolical side. Beowulf may be one of the first plays to capture this audience, but hopefully it’s not the last, nor the best.
Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage by Jason Craig; directed by Rod Hipskind; composer/musical direction by Dave Malloy; artistic direction by Craig and Jessica Jelliffe; dramaturgy by Mallory Catlett; set design and technical management by Banana Bag & Bodice; choreography by Anna Ishida & Shaye Troha; light design by Miranda K. Hardy; sound design by Brendan West; additional costumes by SF Buffoons (Eric & Riddle); props design by Sig Hafstrom; illustration by R Black.
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