SUBVERSION, DISRUPTION—AND PRETENSION
Caught is just what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland: “When you get there, there’s no there there.” A series of metaphysical jokes played on the audience, this self-indulgent tripe purports and provokes where other shows present and persuade. It delivers layer upon layer of theatrical deception till it becomes The Play That Cried “Wolf.” Directed by Seth Bockley with suitable slyness, Sideshow Theatre Company’s Chicago premiere treats Christopher Chen’s artful fabrications as seriously as the put-ons deserve—which is way too much.
Not to get sucked into the plays-within-plays, rabbit holes and inverted mirrors into which Caught plunges and crashes, the travesty initially poses as an art installation: Before the show, audience members can mingle with curators, inspecting objets d’art from the Xiong Art Gallery. Then the pretend patrons get whisked off stage. Dissident artist and professional imposter Lin Bo (Ben Chang), the subject of a recent article in The New Yorker, intones from a podium, describing his stint in Beijing’s “Detention Center 7” for fomenting an “imaginary” protest on June 4, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989.
Next we’re in the New Yorker offices where the profile writer (Ann James) and editor (Bob Kruse), enraged at being “had,” belatedly fact-check plagiarist Bo’s tale of martyrdom and interrogate the passive-aggressive pseudo-protester. They discover that he’s an attention-craving, narcissistic fraud—in short, a performance artist. Shock and awe.
The (in)action switches to a maddening NPR-style interview. Thick with circular reasoning, a debate rages between an American pundit (James) and an intentionally inscrutable Chinese commentator (Helen Young). The latter, politically correct aesthete decries Western “appropriation” of other cultures, even if it succeeds in exposing workplace atrocities in software manufacturing. (Local customs are superior to abstract absolutes like justice.) The former sputters with hapless confusion, not knowing what coverage, if any, can be considered credible. Caught (whose title applies more to the audience than to the characters) ends inconclusively with a domestic squabble over the authenticity of an unseen mentor.
Sporadically, Chen, who seems obsessed with the differences between art and drama audiences, seems to be on to something: His puppet characters opine how “Truth in journalism trumps truth in art.” Clearly (not the right adverb for this show) Chen means to skewer condescending definitions of truth as intellectual property or subjective ideation or to give a new and literal meaning to “con artists” or to undermine unconsidered paradigms of objectivity and accuracy. In any case, these arguably worthy targets deserve a sharper show.
Enervating with self-defeating cleverness, Chen’s 85-minute exercise in fooling the willing (many on the opening night loved being duped) wanes into a sterile experiment in “meta” theater. Fueled by irony on steroids, his pathologically hip one-act festers with insincerity, lampooning seriousness whenever possible. By play’s end (which can’t come too soon), as these Dadaist wanna-bes thank Sideshow Theatre for hosting their insubordinations, Caught has subverted nothing but the audience’s patience and interest.
Sideshow’s press release calls this smug hokum “dangerous” in its peeling of perceptions. But in fact (another loaded word here) its cheap cynicism and phony earnestness are dreary, desiccating, and—worst thought crime of all—predictable.
photos by Jonathan L. Green
Caught
Sideshow Theatre Company
Victory Gardens, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.
Thurs-Sat at 7:30; Sun at 3:00
ends on July 3, 2016
for tickets, call 773.871.3000 or visit Victory Gardens
for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago
