By Greggory Moore
If you’ve been to more than one performance at the Garage Theatre, you know that you never step into the same theatre twice. It’s a close space that is literally transformed specifically for each production that they stage. The seating varies, the stage varies, walls are added or taken away—whatever they deem necessary to get at their interpretation of the work in question.
Currently, the work in question is “Valparaiso” by Don DeLillo. If you enjoy the general subject area of his iconic novel “White Noise”, Valparaiso keeps you in happily familiar territory. “Valparaiso” is the spectacle of Micheal and Livia Majeski drifting without anchor on waves of technology, buffeted about by the media’s exploitative frenzy in the wake of Micheal’s embarking on a plane trip to Valparaiso, Indiana, and ending up (by way of Valparaiso, Florida) in Valparaiso, Chile. On the way, the snappy, serried dialog covers ground relating to how one finds identity in a culture in which the most far-reaching truths and deepest intimacy are found by many not face-to-face but radiating invisibly across empty space.
I read “White Noise” many years ago, and it failed to make any real impression on me; but for some reason “Valparaiso” does. In part this has to do with the fact that, in writing for the theatre, DeLillo can’t rely on a narrative voice—which in “White Noise” seems to me dry and not as clever as it means to be, infecting the voices of the individual characters—but instead has to drive his story onward only in dialog. The result is prose that is vibrant and alive.
But as well written as it is, unlike with (e.g.) a Tom Stoppard play, I’m not sure reading “Valparaiso” would deliver much punch; this is where the Garage Theatre shines. For starters, each and every actor owns his/her character. As the play grinds on, you believe that Steven Parker’s frenetically barren Michael (who is almost never offstage) has done over a hundred interviews in a matter of days; and that Jessica Variz’s Livia literally cannot suppress her instincts of aimless habit and confession. But even the smallest roles stand out, each getting a scene-stealing turn, and the cast interacts and flows together in the theatrical moment, gifting the audience with the illusion of bearing witness an unfolding and not a performance. The play’s extensive technical cues (lighting, sound, video, music) are spot-on, and director Jeff Kriese’s choices clearly show he’s got a grasp of both the play’s moment-to-moment detail and its overarching structure.
Because of the set design, I’m not sure if there is seating for even 30 audience-members, which makes this perhaps the world’s most extensively-produced truly intimate theatrical experience—and one I couldn’t recommend more highly.
“Valparaiso” runs Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. until November 3rd. The Garage Theatre is located at 251 E. Seventh St. (at Long Beach Blvd.). Tickets can be purchased at the door a half-hour before show time or in advance at (866) 811-4111. For more information, call (562) 433-8337 or visit www.thegaragetheatre.org.