Theatre in Review: Juxtapose: A Theatrical Shadow Box (Happenstance Theater/59E59) Near the end of its eighty-minute running time, Juxtapose finds its feet, quite literally: Four cast members, male and female, none of them obviously trained in dance or in the first flush of youth, appear, sporting tutus and lobster claws. Executing some simple steps, including some amusing pincer-to-pincer action, they are joined by willowy Sarah Olmsted Thomas, in a red ballet ensemble and matching toe shoes, performing a star turn to an Offenbach melody. Alone at the finale, she basks in audience applause, gratefully scooping up those claws, which have been tossed to her like floral tributes. Suddenly, the lights darken, and an air raid siren is heard. She vanishes and, seconds later, we see the entire company huddling in terror in a bomb shelter. It's a startling transformation, from mock triumph to real peril; this sequence, I think, finally arrives at the conjunction of fey, tongue-in-cheek comedy and dark ruminations on a society slipping into an abyss that Juxtapose has been reaching for all along. It's a tall order, and, earlier, the piece grasps for some unifying principle without ever finding one. Plotless and fixed on exquisitely rendered comic bits, Juxtapose is an evening of grace notes without a strongly articulated theme, a collection of glosses in search of a text. Juxtapose is the latest production of Happenstance Theater, a DC-based company that builds shows around the creative sensibilities of various artists. Using a combination of mime-based humor, skits, movement, and music, they can, on a good day, make theatre magic. Dreadful Episodes, seen at 59E59 in October, paid amusing tribute to the world of Edward Gorey, in which a stifling Victorian propriety collides with brutal, often fatal, misfortune. Juxtapose, first conceived in 2019, is more complicated, less straightforward: It began as a tribute to both Joseph Cornell's artwork and T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The Eliot connection is hard to divine -- did the lines "I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas" inspire those lobster getups? -- but the Cornell influence is clear. Indeed, in certain stage pictures, the piece tries to frame all the sorrows and absurdities of modern life inside one of the artist's little boxes. But, according to the program, the script has grown over time to take in "the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) and Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle), ephemera, mass extinction and the Anthropocene, discovery, creation, play, attachment, and letting." Given such a crowded recipe, no ingredient can stand out. The story, such as it is, has something to do with the residents of a tenement whose lives are upended by the arrival of a "human shooting star" named Spilleth. (She crashes through the building's roof, leaving a sizable hole that vexes the tenants.) When and where the action plays out is never clear; a certain between-the-wars sensibility predominates, but radio news reports reference thoroughly modern troubles such as climate change. But nobody involved is overly interested in storytelling; the bits are the thing, and to be sure, they are executed with Descartian precision by the company. As Spilleth, Gwen Grastorf does extraordinary things with a piece of rope, whether in a romantic dance with a male partner or using it to "disembowel" an unsuspecting woman. Bald, wide-eyed Mark Jaster, taking to the beach, imitates a seagull with eerie authenticity, capturing every nuance of avian behavior. Red-haired, rouged Sabrina Selma Mandell, her face a mask of weary surprise thanks to a pair of drawn-in eyebrows like exhausted commas, hangs a Red Cross uniform on a clothesline, modestly buttoning it up, lest anyone get any ideas. Thomas, playing a reluctant dancer, executes a lovely Swan Lake exit when not acting out both sides of arguments with her ballet master. With his benign smile and Stan Laurel tuft of hair, Alex Vernon beguiles by inserting his arm into the sleeve of that hanging dress, silently acting out a courtship all by himself. Still, there's no getting around the fact that, under Jaster and Mandell's direction, Juxtapose, devised by the company, wanders from episode to episode, dallying over its favorite bits and taking until the eleventh hour to coalesce into a coherent vision. The presentation is thoroughly professional: Mandell designed the costumes, with the props and scenery by her, Jaster, and Vernon. The lighting by Daniel Weissglass and Kris Thompson is solid, while Madeline Oslejsek's sound design, which combines such effects as surf, birdsong, and children at play with beautifully rendered period tunes including "Charleston," "Stardust," "Stairway to the Stars," and Handel's "Sarabande," is a constant source of delight. Unsurprisingly, given its wobbly structure, Juxtapose ends on an anti-climactic note, adding to the impression that it is a piece that asks hard questions and offers soft answers. Perhaps it was created under the weight of too many influences, with a superfluity of ideas fighting for breathing room; in any case, this theatrical Cornell box is awfully overstuffed. --David Barbour 
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