Review
Boston Globe
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Friday February 2, 2001
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COMEDIC JUGGLER-MUSICIANS IN THE SERVICE OF SCIENCE
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The "Big Bang" about to rock the Wilbur Theatre next week is not the beginning of the universe as we know it. It's the local opening of "L'Universe," the new high-tech extravaganza by those zany comedic juggler-musicians who call themselves the Flying Karamazov Brothers.
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By KAREN CAMPBELL
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The show (appropriately pronounced "looney-verse") breaks new ground for the award-winning four-man troupe, with a truckful of sophisticated computer gadgetry and multimedia theatrics adding an extra dimension to the quartet's trademark juggling wizardry, antic banter, and unorthodox musicmaking.
Unlike previous shows, in which the K's traditionally juggled bizarre objects offered by the audience (Yes, this time you can leave your dead squid and bowling balls at home), "L'Universe" will feature planets soaring through the air and juggling clubs that change color in midflight. Courtesy of the whiz kids at the MIT Media Lab, there will even be a little "virtual juggling" of computer-generated images. It's all in the service of science, as the K's attempt to present a visual link between concepts of relativity and the principles of quantum mechanics.
"L'Universe" is indicative of the troupe's constant stretch to cross boundaries with its art form. Founded by Howard Kay Patterson and Paul Magid, the Flying Karamazov Brothers began in 1973 as simple street performers in San Francisco. Over the years, however, their shows have used juggling as a metaphor, a launching pad for exploring a variety of more cerebral pursuits. The troupe has had six critically acclaimed runs on Broadway,
been on TV shows from "Seinfeld" to "Great Performances," and costarred with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in "The Jewel of the Nile."
With its emphasis on scientific explorations, "L'Universe" is the troupe's most expensive, ambitious, and technologically sophisticated show to date. Self-proclaimed science buffs, the K's have been visiting the Media Lab off and on for more than a decade, always intrigued by the latest techno-gadgetry in the works. However, it wasn't until an audience member set the group up with the Lab's Neil Gershenfield that they actually discussed all the projects their fanciful imaginations had envisioned. "We went in with a laundry list of things we wanted to attempt to do, things we'd always dreamed could be done once the technology caught up with us," Patterson recalls. "And as we went down the list, Neil kept saying, 'Yeah, I think I know how we could do that.' "
The technology enabled the K's to create a comic science lesson aiming "to inform, educate, and inspire, in addition to entertain," Patterson says. He adds, completely deadpan, "It was Paul's idea to narrow the subject to the entire universe. . . . What we realized is that everything science knows about how the universe works now is contrary to anything we would normally imagine. Relativity is not intuitive, quantum mechanics are not intuitive. We wanted to try to explain that to a basic audience of regular folks. In the process, we do some of the most complicated, most difficult juggling we've ever done, but at the same time work with these wonderful toys."
Those new toys include a set of clubs fitted with light-emitting diodes that change color according to their position in a juggling cycle and, according to Patterson, help audiences make visual sense of the group's astonishing improvised club-passing routine, called "Jazz." The difficulty is that for the lights to register, it must be done in near darkness, turning a risky routine into a perilous one. "At first, I didn't think it was going to work, and I thought we were going to get killed, and was saying we should wear helmets and full body armor," Patterson says with a laugh. "But we figured out what the rules are, even though it's still incredibly speculative."
It was the Media Lab that came up with the idea of virtual juggling, in which a computer creates a virtual environment with objects that respond to gravity and rebound from shadows, and the performers have to juggle intangible images. "We have NASA photographs of planets that fall until they reach the shadow of a hand," Patterson explains. "Paul manages to juggle Mars, Venus, and Neptune at one point."
Magid also brings a kid from the audience to play volleyball with Earth. "People sometimes think it's just a videotape, but Paul brings up kids so young the audience knows they couldn't possibly be shills. Because our attitude is so irreverent, people sometimes don't believe what we're doing is real. Believe me, it'd be a lot cheaper to cheat!"
The most ambitious addition is a sonar tracking device to monitor where the performers are on stage, which works with an instrument they call a floorboard, a six-octave octagonal keyboard that stretches across the stage. "We'd been working a long time on the idea of a large musical instrument that can be danced or juggled on," Patterson explains. "We wanted to make the whole stage an instrument. We used a floor piano before, but that only had 10 notes, and we didn't have control over dynamics and sustain."
The performers wear electronic backpacks and modified aviator helmets ringed with sonar transducers, enabling their movements (and those of their juggling clubs) to be measured by computers. The electronic signals are turned into musical variables, thereby creating live music dependent on the performers' every gesture.
During the show, the K's portray the four icons of science - Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein - who spout a variety of "looney verses" and argue about their theories. "The portrayals aren't particularly authentic," Patterson admits, "but the costumes are gorgeous. . . . The most challenging aspect of the show is keeping it funny, creating scripts about particle physics and still be funny to a lay audience. You won't leave knowing everything you need to know about physics, but it may whet your appetite."
The show also includes the most dangerous piece the K's have ever done, a musical bit that demonstrates Newtonian physics.
"We have these five gigantic pendula with a 30-foot arm," Patterson says. "The weight on each one is a gong, a big bell, and we play them with mallets, then swing them and walk through playing them as they swing. If we stand in the wrong place at the wrong time, we could lose a knee. . . . It's a moment of fairly high danger during which we try to play beautiful music and not get hurt."
Local fans will notice two new faces in the group, Mark Ettinger and Roderick Kimball, who Patterson says have helped reinvigorate their work. "We've always had this limitless enthusiasm, but everyone else we've dragged into the group has gotten exhausted. We wanted to get a couple of younger guys who could really last a while, and they're great. Musical juggling, being able to hear odd time signatures and make that happen in juggling, is not something most people can imagine doing.
"It's such a gigantic project that we're constantly redoing and retuning it," Patterson says. "It's largely experimental, and we run the experiment then change a variable to try to make it more successful as we go. Each show is another chance to do that. It's constantly evolving."
Much like the universe? "The universe is a very complicated place and never the way we experience it," he says. "Reality is far more than meets the eye. Juggling is constantly a metaphor." | |
