An Unstoppable Eros-Water Romance (English Translation)

“Cab Legs” at the KunstenFESTIVALdesArts

by Laurent Ancion

Linda Callaway is a pianist and singer. John Biltmore is a doctor. She loves him. He wants her. Alas, their love is impossible: Mr. Callaway doesn’t want his daughter kicking around with an inconstant man. What’s more, Linda is inhibited and John’s a brawler . . . What a superb scenario for a photo novel! With New York’s Elevator Repair Service, this rosewater plot will fizz into laughing intoxication . . . “Cab Legs” is a bit Tristan-Tzara-meets-Victor-Fleming, a Dada version of “Gone With The Wind”. On the stage of Theatre 140 — via the KunstenFESTIVALdesArts — unfolds irrefutable proof that you can innovate without being uptight.

In fact, it all starts with a wild dance, full of shaking moves like a milkshake. “Cab Legs” means “Cab’s legs”: the star jazzman Cab Calloway is never far away, with his white smoking jacket and his dandy airs. He will even make a (re)appearance. But “Cab Legs” is also “taxi legs”: a delirious idea that sets the tone for the drama . . .

The feet tap the floor, the faces mug, the heads jiggle. You don’t understand anything yet but already you’re smiling at the personality of the members of Elevator Repair Service because they have that familiar air of the “third knife” in a TV series. Suddenly they abandon the stage, leaving it almost bare: four old chairs, a cabinet on casters, and a small stepladder remain. These will be more than enough to support the drama.

In silence, in preposterous or murmured dialogues (understanding the English isn’t imperative but it lets you in on loads of gags), in chair- and shoe-squeakings, in little ironic glances and sudden dances, the team carries us away into an irresistible mess. The episodes of the story, delightfully anecdotal, become the stages of an old dream: winning the attention and respect of another. There is Mrs. Callaway who apes everyone, her husband anxious about his work, their daughter Linda who’s fighting a stomach spasm, her pupil Maggy who’d like to get it on with John, John who no longer knows whose heart to devote his energies to . . .

In all, nine characters are revealed — nine actors you’d like to put in your pocket for a rainy day. At the risk of a few flabby moments, Elevator Repair Service reinvents the tracking shot: “Cab Legs” plays straight through without cutting, like an improbable film with too many heroes, too many rebounds, too many intentions, too many mixed genres  — from cartoons to Indian romance. And that makes for a piece that’s unstoppable, tender, and completely off the wall.

To achieve its ends the company makes good use of the backstage space — that theatrical “off-screen”. Music, voices, and sound effects colonize this zone, ordinarily left uncultivated. The recorded sound, playful and unrestrained, also mixes styles and sources. It bears the signature of director John Collins, who is a sound designer for the Wooster Group as well. A considerable pedigree . . .

Our man of the avant-garde, however, is not stuck in his head: with his troupe he innovates the way one sings in the shower. And it is we who are refreshed.

translation by Scott Shepherd and Katherine Profeta