Stage Review
'Edmond' plays out a surreal journey

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'Edmond' Where: Ernst Lab Theatre, University of Hawai'i When: 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday Tickets: $7; $6 for seniors, UH faculty and staff, and non-UH students; $3 for UH students Information: 956-7655

Edmond Burke seems to have everything — except peace of mind. He's got a wife, a home, a job, and (maybe) an identity. But one night he tells his wife he's leaving — and he's not coming back. She no longer meets his psychological and sexual needs.

What follows for Edmond is an abrupt and painful bump down the stairs to the lower depths — each successive thud accompanied by his articulating his increasingly bruised philosophy and personal search for meaning in a bigoted existence: "The white race is dying. It's had the life bred out of it."

Edmond appears to have gone mad. He's also embarked on a surreal journey through sex, crime, and punishment — told in noir tones and snatches of truncated dialogue.

The short, one-hour piece is directed by Taurie Goddess (formerly Kinoshita), who won't for a moment let us identify with a character or forget we're in a theater. The focus is always squarely on the process — and on the didactic.

She casts Edmond — a white man — with a black actor (Moses Goods) in whiteface, and peoples the remaining melange of races and accents with a company of supporting players (Christine Hauptman, Kathy Hunter, Ben Lukey, and Hank West).

Despite the production style, Goods turns in a warmly feeling performance. His motives may be cloudy, but his middle-class confusion is real as he improbably seeks lower and lower levels. "Looking for love in all the wrong places," as the song says.

Supporting actors melt into and out of their roles, signaling a change in character with a physical metamorphosis. Their accents are realistic, but they make no attempts to suggest character with props or make-up. Costumes are uniform blue cover-alls.

Scene changes are crudely hand-lettered on butcher paper, the rare pieces of furniture are suggested by plywood boxes, and various scents and smoke waft through the theater. Sound and lights are similarly hammer-handed.

The medium constitutes most of the message in this production, but we are tempted to revisit Edmund in the final scene to check on the development of his world view. In the depths of his degradation, he seems to have found peace as a bottom-feeder, even planting a good night kiss on the lips of the black cell-mate who earlier forcibly sodomized him.

This is challenging, provocative stuff, precisely suited to the theater's midnight hour. Ultimately, it leaves it to the audience to process the images and events and to ultimately determine whether Edmond reached a level of personal insight. And whether that insight is transferrable.