One of the brightest moments in the piece involves the eleven o’clock can-can number courtesy of Couture’s brashly bright lights and the ensemble’s nimble pinwheel legwork. Adam Flemming’s projections are properly eerie and Francois Pierre-Couture’s lighting design is truly magnificent: His purples and greens smartly conjure up the environment of being both drowned in absinthe and deep underwater. And Zsebe as sound designer does offer moody music and foreboding atmospheric textures. Actors carry a razor blade to make entrances into the plastic-lined set or erupt from an enclosed space.Īnn Closs-Farley’s black-and-white costumes carry killer steampunk flair. Jason Adams’ gorgeously dressed set is draped with see-through plastic lining instead of cloth though it seems more like a jellyfish, I can see how it could be like the linings of an octopus. It doesn’t work because we’re not all in the same headspace as those who created it, and no effort is made to engage the audience in a way where we feel like we are connecting with what the performers are saying.Įven though his staging makes good use of the deep space and deftly plays with its four corners, Zsebe’s direction is frustrating because it is resolutely dense and defies connectedness, in spite of his smart blocking and a crackerjack team of designers. Maybe it can, but here it is the opposite of effective. In Fried, the creators make the mistake that this popcorn-type effect of topic jumping and oblique callbacks can work on the stage.
![fried octopus fried octopus](https://tastycraze.com/files/lib/400x296/parjen-oktopod.jpg)
#Fried octopus windows#
The result is a hodgepodge of philosophy hunting in which disparate truths are hurled at us like searching for different ideas in different windows on an Internet browser. Instead of a clear narrative, what we have is an absinthe-soaked progression of discussions and monologues that veer from subjects like Toulouse Lautrec, divine femininity, and women in art.
![fried octopus fried octopus](https://cdn.w600.comps.canstockphoto.com/close-up-fried-giant-squid-fried-stock-images_csp67577359.jpg)
![fried octopus fried octopus](https://previews.123rf.com/images/bbtreesubmission/bbtreesubmission1902/bbtreesubmission190200828/116883388-stir-fried-rice-with-small-octopus-and-vegetables-sprinkled-flying-fish-roe-made-on-iron-plate.jpg)
Retaining a cephalopod’s far-ranging spinelessness and wide-ranging tentacles, Alicia Adams and Justin Zsebe’s vanity work, A Fried Octopus, makes a squishy thud at The Bootleg.