Theatre in Review: Berlindia! (The Tank)

	Rosalie Neal, Arjun Biju, Pete Simpson. Photo: Maria Baranova

In this odd little comic anxiety dream, everything is slip-sliding away, leaving the characters stuck on constantly shifting ground. In one case, they even crash-land onto it, but that's only to be expected in the faintly treacherous universe concocted by playwright Daniel Holzman. Indeed, in Holzman's view, to stay put is to end up somewhere else. Most of the people in Berlindia hail from South San Francisco, which, we learn, has "moved again. And, well, nobody knows where it is." If the idea of a small city hitting the road strikes you as peculiar, consider that everyone in the play is bound for Berlin, which, someone notes, "might now be in India. You know, places move."

The Earth's tectonic plates are constantly shifting beneath the siblings Burger and Fuck, names that may clue you in to the level of humor here. Their mother (helpfully named "Mother") has fled to the city of the title, largely because she has become obsessed with techno music. (She is especially devoted to a sub-genre known as "Surf-Sun-Techno-BitchDrop-CoreCow-GrauStraSeM6-Percolan." Try saying that three times fast.) Arriving in Berlindia -- by way of Rio, another example of the play's fractured geometry -- which appears to be both a city and a nightclub, Burger and Fuck are introduced to Mother's brother, known as Uncle Mother. Meanwhile, their dad is in New York, touring museums devoted to the Holocaust. This is something of a hobby: As he notes, he is attracted to them because, "I love watching blonde women from the South cry."

Rich with incident yet lacking any meaningful action, Berlindia! is largely content to coast on its many mild ironies, under which lurks an unsettled feeling for a planet slipping out of control. In this, it resembles the work of Liza Birkenmeier's Grief Hotel and the entire oeuvre of Will Eno. Holzman has a sneaky sense of humor that can catch you off guard, for example, when the eight-year-old Burger, not considering the consequences, threatens a hunger strike if her goldfish isn't liberated. I also treasure the remark made by her teacher, Ms. M., noting that "'Eccentric' is a word people without personalities use to describe people they're secretly jealous of." (Who among us hasn't thought this? No? Thought not.)

Then again, the trouble with Berlindia! is that it is both eccentric and lacking a strong profile. It is lackadaisical, insular in its humor, content to follow unpromising ideas to their logical limits. Holzman is oddly fond of Holocaust references; in addition to the running gag about museums, Mother's favorite techno style is referred to as the "Dachau of music." (That one, applying a destination to a genre, doesn't even make sense.) A random reference to "a room where you can see Chloe Sevigny fist an entire government" leads to other citations of this particular sexual practice, all of them utterly random. (What did Sevigny ever do to Holzman?) And there's a faintly borscht-belt quality to Dad's attempt at merging Buddhism and Judaism into a new religion called Jewddhism. Watching Berlindia!, one gets the feeling it wants to provoke or shock, if only it could work up the energy.

Noah Latty's direction is heavy on deadpan line readings, which is probably the way to go here. (The plane crash sequence, complete with an airline attendant straight out of a revival of Cabaret, is cleverly staged.) Rita Wolf is underused as Mother, who spends much of the play missing in action; whenever she turns up, things perk up, providing a sense of authority that the script otherwise lacks. Rosalie Neal and Arjun Biju are solid enough as Burger and Fuck, as is Mike Iveson as the mysterious Uncle Mother, who is either a total stranger to his niece and nephew or a fixture of their childhoods; opinions vary on this point. Susannah Millonzi is suitably imperious as Ms. M., another closet techno fan. As the father, the delightful Pete Simpson is a walking dad joke, his determinedly mild manner making an amusing contrast to the worrisome activities of his loved ones.

Tank productions are generally spare in their design values, so Colleen Murray's set mostly consists of a black-and-white checkerboard floor and an upstage floral curtain. Once the action shifts to Berlindia, Marika Kent's lighting relies on a series of vertical bar units that evoke a dance club mood; unfortunately, they are so bright they sometimes upstage the actors. Chris Darbassie's sound design includes various airplane effects and, yes, lots of techno music. Sam Debell's costumes are solid, especially the nightclub bouncer dressed like the Egyptian god Anubis.

If you stare long and hard enough at Berlindia!, you may detect a sense of alarm at a world rapidly falling apart: Families are fractured, memories are unreliable, and disruptive change is omnipresent. But these characters are pursuing an itinerary with no clear destination. The play is full of jitters, most of them distressingly mild. --David Barbour