One Yellow Rabbit’s feature in this year’s High Performance Rodeo Theatre Festival is entitled Munich Now, the second feature in a three part series, The Tangled Tongue Trilogy. The Trilogy deals with three unique stories in three world languages. The first was Kawasaki Exit, set in a suburb of Tokyo. Munich Now, performed for the most part in German, is a comedic look at the absurdity of modern media and is a satire of the current state of critical thought.
This is what the play aims to do. Within the context of a television studio, the play opens to Florian Von Decker (Devon Dubnyk) explaining to the audience in German, (with English subtitles projected) how the talk show works. There is a special guest (played by Andy Curtis), whom the two hosts, journalist Lena Moller (Denise Clarke) and chef Wolfgang Langer (Christopher Hunt) have to guess their identity. Once the guest’s identity is revealed, this person is then interviewed by the hosts.
The narrative is full of absurdity and amusing hyperbole. For instance, the guest’s book is entitled: I’ve Been Shot in the Face and You Haven’t. His career as a musician produces songs entitled “There Will be a Brighter Day in Four Years”.
The play was full of amusing concepts. Like the host of the television show being obsessed with themselves and not asking any real questions of their special guest or Wolfgang spending most of his time concocting bizarre appetizers in the corner.
Though Munich Now, had some humorous moments, it failed to build any connection to the characters. It was absurdity for absurdity’s sake. In order for a parody to actually work, it has to be grounded in some sort of reality. The narrative danced in the realm of satire without revealing any truth about its subject.
Munich Now is part of the High Performance Rodeo Theatre Festival and runs until the 25th of January. Tickets and more information is available online.
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