Elevator Repair Service hits the fast-forward button on Shakespeare

By Helen Shaw

There’s a famous gag about the fallacy of infinite regress—supposedly told by Bertrand Russell—in which an old lady disagrees with a lecturing Copernican. The universe, she swears, is actually a plate on top of a giant turtle. The scientist asks her what the turtle stands on. “It’s turtles,” she tuts. “Turtles all the way down.” Trying to think about an Elevator Repair Service show can feel like struggling with that old lady. The production’s clearly a tissue of nonsense; you know the argument is screwy. But when an ERS piece works, it’s actually because of the earnestness of its own absurdity. At the existential level, it’s jokes, jokes, jokes. It’s jokes all the way down.

ERS is an experimental company—which in this case means experientially slippery, intentionally odd, gleefully shambolic. The troupe is interested in deconstructing texts, sometimes cutting them apart, or layering them, or in one case, making a new one out of passages from Supreme Court documents. ERS usually has a taste for top-flight literary material, but onstage, director John Collins and the company play with intentional “badness.” Costumes seem pulled from rehearsal gear. Props are goofy. And acting styles range from the staggeringly precise to the stunned quality of a deer in headlights.

Excerpt from “Measure for Measure: Elevator Repair Service hits the fast-forward button on Shakespeare” by Helen Shaw. Read the full article here.