REVIEW: Zero Cost House at Pig Iron Theatre 🏠 3.5
⭐⭐⭐1/2
Theater review by Rachel Yong @yorachel__
Theater review by Rachel Yong @yorachel__
ZERO COST HOUSE by @PigIronTheatre, in this time, within the confines of a small screen, holds you at a distance, but gently reminds that great works (here: Walden) give us something to hang on to, to build a life around. Writer Okada, played by various actors throughout the piece, uses the singular work by Thoreau to reframe and revisit the shifting perspectives of his life, often humorously playing off former versions of himself and in conversation with Walden's author, Henry David Thoreau.
The play is sprawling, elaborate, intricate, and layered. Small play-figure vignettes add whimsy to the mood, but should not be relied on to 'lighten' it - rather, they're used to powerfully capture large scale events in miniature - in particular, the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
While the layers unveiling Okada's larger politics in the wake of the disaster are easy to get lost in, the resounding final 'wist' is not a difficult one to relate to in these times - the desire to start over, to form a new government, to defect to another country, to simply be a rabbit.
As a longer virtual play (2 hours), the heady language and lack of central narrative can certainly constrain and exhaust, but in doing so, also deftly recreates in us that yearning to escape the complexities of adulthood - along with any 'success' achieved (Okada finds us after being hailed as 'the talent of a decade') - and return to simpler times, to our younger, less cynical selves who might be satisfied by little more than a book, an album, or wood box "six feet long by three [feet] wide" with enough room and time and freedom to sit up in.
Faced with limited means towards "a larger and more luxurious box," in our homes or in our theaters, art must be the air that we let in. The play reminds that whether we are wage slaves or woods tenants, we are still small figures in the grand scale of things - no single one of us can control the dangers of our countries or our climate. And so we must reckon with building the sense of calm within.
Performances of Zero Cost House (for Zoom) are Friday, September 18 at 8pm, Saturday, September 19 at 8pm, Sunday, September 20 at 2pm and 8pm, and Friday, September 25 at 8pm (all times EDT).
Purchase tickets at pigiron.ticketleap.com/zero-cost-house-zoom. More info at www.PigIron.org.
Runtime: 2 hours
Tickets: $10 per person and $20 per household---
Zero Cost House (for Zoom)
Presented by Pig Iron Theatre Company
Written by Toshiki Okada
Translated by Aya Ogawa
Adapted and directed by Dan Rothenberg
Featuring Dito van Reigersberg (PITC Co-Founder, company
member and better known as Martha Graham Cracker), Alex Torra (PITC Associate Artist,
Team Sunshine), Mary McCool (New Paradise Laboratories, Play Company), frequent Pig Iron
collaborators Maiko Matsushima and Saori Tsukada (Club Diamond at Public Theater, Sleep
at BAM), as well as newcomers Will Brill (Broadway’s Oklahoma!, Netflix’s “The OA”) and
Aigner Mizzelle (BFA NYU, Tisch).
The production team includes Maiko Matsushima (Visual Design), Rucyl Frison (Sound
Design), Adam Swez (Stage Manager), Jacob Gilbert (Sound Operator) and Alexandra
Tatarsky (Dramaturgy).
Zero Cost House originally premiered in September 2012 at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival
and was part of the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater in New York and then the
Tokyo Performing Arts Market in 2013. The updated Zoom version premiered earlier this
summer.
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