Elevator Repair Service: "The Sound and the Fury: April Seventh, 1928"

REDCAT: West Coast premiere

"Utterly original... A stunning act of choreographed literary transmutation." Time Out New York

"A great work... its rough-hewn, homemade air is suffused with an innocence that one rarely glimpses in a contemporary work of art." Hilton Als, The New Yorker

When the famously risk-taking experimental New York company announced that it was producing a stage adaptation of the first chapter of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, it was rumored that the young theatrical innovators had finally lost their minds. The resulting production turned out to be the runaway Off-Broadway sensation of the ’08 season as ERS’s masterful work illuminated with heartbreaking lucidity what is one of the most daunting passages in American literature. That mesmerizing opening section of Faulkner’s novel, "April Seventh, 1928," wends its labyrinthine way though the decline of a Mississippi family from the point of view of stunted man-child Benjy Compson—a deeply scarred mute who cannot tell past from present. In bringing this dark tale to the stage, director John Collins and the 12-member troupe fully embrace Faulkner’s free-flowing language and his radically fractured, multilayered narrative technique. Multiple actors portray each character as the ensemble inhabits an eerily timeless family living room, using bawdy humor, pathos, and jolts of high-energy choreography to build up an exhilarating, unforgettable theatrical experience.

Funded in part by a generous grant from The George and MaryLou Boone Fund for Artistic Advancement.

See: http://redcat.org/season/0809/the/elevator.php [1] ($)