Volcano gushes forth over four episodes and nearly four hours at St. Ann’s Warehouse
VOLCANO
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
January 10-21, $54
stannswarehouse.org
Luke Murphy’s Volcano is an eruption of ingenuity, a multimedia, multidisciplinary melding of past, present, and future bathed in mystery.
Continuing at St. Ann’s Warehouse through January 21 as part of the Under the Radar festival, the nearly four-hour presentation takes place in a large transparent box, with the audience sitting on two sides in rising rafters. Alyson Cummins and Pai Rathaya’s set is a ramshackle room with drooping wallpaper, television monitors, a disco ball, a black trunk, toy figurines, and other odd, seemingly random items.
Every time an old-fashioned radio suddenly blurts on, two unidentified men, portrayed by Irish writer, director, and choreographer Murphy (X) and London-born dancer and actor Will Thompson (Y), they grab a camera on a tripod and try to film themselves dancing. Other times they glide into compelling duets in silence, interrupted by light and sound glitches that make it feel like they are under someone else’s control. Which, to some extent, they are.
The two men are participants in the Amber Project, a 1950s-like space mission. “We at the Amber Project are ready to take the next step in the exciting and illustrious heritage of exploration and technological advancement,” a spokesman tells them on the monitors. “This Alinia rocket with the mission designation Pod 00 will soon hurl a crewless spacecraft into orbit — the first of a series of interstellar vehicles, similar to the one which will soon carry two travellers past the reaches of our solar system for the first time.” But what’s really going on?
Volcano pours out over the course of four forty-five-minute episodes — “Frequency,” “Realia,” “Gift,” and “Pod 261” — with two five-minute pauses and one standard intermission in between. If you’re looking for easy answers to what’s happening, you’re not going to find them.
“I’m confused. And I’m scared. I don’t know anything. It’s like my mind’s a library and I just went to a section of shelves I don’t normally go to, and all the book are gone. . . . I don’t even know what books are supposed to be there. And that scares me. I . . . keep wondering . . . What are we doing?” Y says at one point. “I keep wondering whether the things I recognize, the things that make me feel comfortable . . . Do I trust them because I know them, or do I trust them because I don’t know anything else? . . . Now, I know something’s changed here, but I can’t tell if I’ve lost focus on something I used to see or if I’m only now noticing what I couldn’t see before. And mainly . . . I’m wondering who knows all the things I don’t. And that . . . that makes me scared.”
The abstract, surreal narrative breaks out into a game show, a weather report, Amber Project testimonials, magic tricks, a nod to virtual reality pioneer Morton Heilig, and songs by Hot Chip, the Beach Boys, Dirty Beaches, and Billie Holiday. Visual references are made to Superman, Marilyn Monroe, Michelangelo, and iconic 1960s sci-fi television.
The dialogue doesn’t make things much clearer, only adding to the conundrum:
Y: You know, I feel like we’ve got a real opportunity here, you know?
X: I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
Y: Well, you know, we can’t walk away from this; we should, you know, grab the bull by the horns.
X: You were saying you felt confused?
Y: This feels . . . this is important.
X: I believe you, I think.
And:
Y: Do you ever just wanna do something different?
X: What do you mean?
Y: Never mind.
Volcano is a technical marvel, mixing analog and digital in complex and humorous ways; the lighting is by Stephen Dodd, with sound by Rob Moloney. The prefilmed videos were directed by Pato Cassinoni, with a cast that includes Adam Burton, Amaya Gill, Ciaran Bermingham, Emily Terndrup, Ghaliah Conroy, Gina Moxley, John McCarthy, Lily Ockwell, Mufutau Yusuf, Pearse Donoghue, Rocio Dominguez, and Sile Maguire.
Does Volcano need to be as long as it is? Probably not. Should the audience have to wait about two and a half hours before a proper intermission? Not really. But if you give in to its conceits, it’s not unlike binging a limited sci-fi series that is as perplexing as it is riveting, with the added bonus of captivating choreography.
Murphy (Slow Tide, Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte) and Thompson are a dynamic duo, immersed in a cryptic world that reveals humanity losing its grip on reality — but always with a ray of hope somewhere out there on the horizon.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]