Satori Group's Fabulous Prizes: Revisionist Lives

The Satori Loft is a hell of a space. It isn't gilded with gold leaf or vintage moulding; it feels worked-in, like a place where hands have gotten dirty. It's a 'Lab,' the home of the burgeoning Satori Group, a place for "the development of new work, through ensemble generation and collaboration with guest artists and playwrights." True to their focus, they bring to Seattle the debut of Fabulous Prizes, by Seattle playwright Neil Ferron. And what better venue for the play to attain the light of day, having received the treatment of Satori's First Look Series?

Fabulous Prizes centers on Julius and Arthur, father and son, both of them deeply defeated in special ways. Having deliberately cut themselves off from the world, the pair make a life of reinventing the past, themselves, and their purposes, re-scripting that which has been most damaging, fabricating a former glory, and grasping hopelessly to that which was once good, and is gone. They play parts for one another, literally and figuratively, plunging continually deeper into a strange mythology of Julius' particular conception, which has consumed them. The play is about what happens when a straw-reality is challenged, when reaching too far beyond itself it is confronted with a reality that is beyond control. What happens when the seams tear? What happens when the machinery of a vast lie begins to break down? It's a psychological shmorgasboard.

In keeping with the themes of the script the production hits the nail on the head. The attention to detail in the set design is to be commended, the little slivers of windows peeking out into the cruel world like squinting eyes, the walls of the apartment stained, the suffocating home is as dilapidated as its denizens, ordered but rotting. The Loft itself is perfect for this particular play, worn-in and hidden away.

And all four actors turn in delicious performances, the three male characters dancing between comical folly and tragic desperation, the one female character, whom I'll return to in a moment, profoundly affecting in a mire of captivity. I left the play swimming in wonderfully complicated feelings about the characters, most of them having committed despicable deeds, but their despicability having been borne of a sense of loss or failure or naivety that is, in a way we keep secret, relatable.

A lament I expect to hear and read as the play is subjected to a gauntlet of reviews is of a tenor of misogyny. Our one female character is, after all, physically bound for the majority of her stage time, which indeed becomes difficult to watch. And yet I posit that, while misogyny is decidedly a pervasive element in the lives of our characters, neither the play nor the production glorify it or make it seem even momentarily just. One must bear in mind that one is not exploring the psyches of healthy people:

Julius perceives in his maleness an onus to be, "a creature who mounts." It's his inability to mount--in more ways than one--that creates in him a sense of demasculinization, which translates (in his corrupt mind) to uselessness, and is his undoing. The horrific acts he initiates are those of a person who has been destroyed, having been 'mounted.'

The play is at once complex and economical, as is the Satori production of it. Don't bring the kids, don't expect a delightful romp of whimsy, but if you're interested in gritty and original new work (all the better for being the work of so many capable Seattleites) don't miss this play.

Thursday through Monday at 8:00 p.m., through May 30 // The Satori Loft, 619 Western Avenue (4th floor) // $12 - $18, tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets