Willamette Week - Wednesday, July 23, 2003
In
Theatre Vertigo's latest production entitled Prague-Nosis!, nothing
is what it seems. Is it Czech? Is it noir? Is it a mystery? Well, not
exactly. But that's sort of the point in this rather elaborate but farcical
whodunit story that follows Detective Dick Piston (Tom Moorman) on a case
involving stolen jewels belonging to the famous French-cum-Czech actress
Pleasure Hello (Camille Cettina). Her story about the jewels, as well
as herself, is unclear and fuzzy, and leads to a tangled web involving
hypnotist/typist extraordinaire Zing The Amazing (Kam Sisco), which then
spans out to the self-proclaimed international jewel thief Misha Novakova
(Melody Bridges), and stodgy Havel Presley (Darius Pierce), who suffers
from a perpetual pantlessness syndrome, along with the trauma (or over-assumptions?)
of the disappearance of his wife. These and other problems are all eventually
hilariously explained, with a self-aware, animated quality that uses armadas
of wordplay and parodic strategies in a roller-coaster ride of theatrical
fun. Prague-Nosis! in some ways is a standard classic detective
story, taking the character templates (tough-guy detectives, seductive
damsels, foreign evil, etc.) and plot outlines (stolen and lost riches,
disappeared persons, identity crises) of film noir, but processed with
comedy-sketch caricatures more akin to The Big Lebowski than The
Big Sleep. Sure, it's all fun and games until...the big twist (or
is it really a twist at all?). Like numerous works in film in recent years,
Prague-Nosis! uses elements of noir and attempts to ask what "truth"
means these days anyhow, albeit in its own off-the-wall, wacky, and enjoyable
fashion, with attention-grabbing, humorously explosive acting by the entire
cast.