Stage Review
Commedia style used for UH staging of anti-war play

‘Zanni Got His Gun: A Commedia War Epic’ 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday Ernst Lab Theatre $7 956-7655

Contemporary anti-war plays feel strangely out of date and, for anyone who lived through the student activism of the 1970s, they lack fire and authenticity. Still, the Greeks were staging anti-war plays two millenniums ago, so no generation has a lock on the genre. Tony Pisculli’s version, "Zanni Got His Gun: A Commedia War Epic," is now playing in the Late Night slot at UH-Manoa’s Ernst Lab Theatre.

The production frames the issue in commedia dell’arte techniques, with the result that style is a clear winner over substance. We enjoy the mechanics, but the anti-war theme is not central and primarily bookends the action.

Its Soldier character is gunned down in the opening sequence and transported to a commedia world for a series of short comic scenes. The final scene returns him to the battlefield, where he dies. In between, this "Commedia War Epic" offers some fun, at least as long as the action stays fresh.

The risk in using this 16th-century technique of stock characters and improvisation is that spontaneity can sometimes go flat. Then, like any stand-up comic knows, it’s time for a quick drum roll and a new routine.

Some of the bits in this show wear thin, but not badly enough to slow it down. And Pisculli’s decision to stick with visual elements over scripted dialogue turns out to be a good one. The traditional stock characters - young lovers, braggart soldiers and lusting old men - chatter away in a melange of squeaks and squawks and mangled English and Japanese phrases, recreating the original effect where itinerant actors and country audiences often spoke widely differing Italian dialects.

The first scenes are the most fun. Here, the commedia chorus of masked servant characters (called zanni) discover the downed Soldier, he learns to communicate in their mixture of dance and pantomime, and the audience discovers a delightful new way to communicate.

The Soldier (Jeremy Pippin) becomes the central zanni and earns his title billing when competing old men enlist him to train his peers for war against each other. But before we get there, there are several obligatory scenes that need attention.

The new zanni is tempted romantically by a young woman (Chihiro Hosono) and ravished by her lustful mother (Kelly Williams). An old man (Ryan Miyashiro) meddles in everyone’s business, and a pair of boasting soldiers (Ben Lukey and Debra Zwicker) compete for leadership.

Eventually Zanni gets around to training his new recruits and, to illustrate that commedia is licensed to steal from any successful source, drills them in a broom handle percussion routine that is right out of "Stomp."

Sadly enough, the war eventually intrudes on the fun, and an entire squad of zannis is cut down. Maybe it just goes to show that when you mix metaphors, somebody is bound to get hurt.

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