Edition: U.S. / Global

THEATER REVIEW; A Suicidal Man and a World, in a State of Suspension

Published: November 7, 2003

Artists of all stripes give a lot of thought to the methods and purposes of creativity: how and why do they do what they do? And much work, both beautiful and pretentious, has derived from self-examination. Such is ''The Hanging Man,'' a wry rumination on death and the purpose of art by the British troupe Improbable Theater.

The show, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater through Sunday as part of the Next Wave Festival, is a parable framed by a ''how a story is told'' narration. The whole of it is presented in a series of performance-art tableaus, visually striking and often quite funny, on a complicated set that includes smoke machines evidently stowed everywhere, rear projections, a pulley system that would win top prize at a school science fair and a raked stage hiding all manner of trap doors.

The inner story is that of a medieval architect, Edward Braff (Richard Katz), who has been greatly lauded for a cathedral he designed and has been commissioned to build another, only to find himself creatively stymied halfway through its construction. Tormented by his block and by the thought of failure, he hangs himself from a beam in his unfinished building. But he doesn't die. Rather, the specter of death comes to him and condemns him to dangle by his neck and contemplate his act until he understands what it means. Only then will she -- death is played by Lisa Hammond -- grant his wish to die.

The result of this unnatural occurrence is an undermining of other presumed truths. Braff's wealthy patron (Ed Woodall) suddenly grows a conscience and is tormented by guilt over those he has mistreated. The church becomes fearful and faith is rendered useless, represented by a robed clergyman (Nick Haverson, doing a savagely simple mimicry of Pope John Paul II). In a scene satirically accompanied by music that could be from an over-the-top gothic horror film, the clergyman's head seemingly revolves on his neck à la Linda Blair in ''The Exorcist,'' and then he melts into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West.

The premise is high-minded, meant as a provocation, and throughout there is a stubbornly unsettling visual effect: Mr. Katz actually spends most of the play's 90 minutes suspended in midair in a harness that makes it appear as if he is being held aloft by a noose.

Even so, most of the show is delivered with irreverence and an anachronistic disregard of the medieval idiom. Flip iconoclasm is a trademark of the Improbables, who are not afraid of dopiness and who frequently improvise. Sometimes it doesn't work: a lament by Braff's wife (Rachael Spence), delivered as if she were a cabaret singer, falls flat, only partly because Ms. Spence's voice does. But sometimes you can't help laughing in spite of yourself, as when Mr. Katz, his feet high above the ground, joins a disco routine going on beneath him, or when Catherine Marmier, playing a French general in a comic duet with Ms. Hammond as her translator, complains that going to war is now futile.

In various combinations, the performers narrate the story, saying they are recounting a true series of events, though confessing, ''Bits of it we made up to make it seem better than it was.''

The idea of the frame, of course, is to address the question of how imagination, nurtured by reality, creates art. And on this theme, the Improbables are also most effective when they are leavening their tale with humor. Among the odd and ponderous things that occur in the wake of Braff's unsuccessful suicide is that deaths of all types cease. Dying becomes impossible, which makes death the only thing on anyone's mind, the illustration of which is a preposterously silly but irresistible game of charades, with the company members miming a variety of formerly mortal fates.

In the end, the frame and the parable are meant to meld together like a narrative Möbius strip, so that the point is made that the telling and the tale constitute a unified creative act.

In published interviews, the creators of ''Hanging Man,'' which was written, designed and directed by Phelim McDermott, Lee Simpson and Julian Crouch, have said that the show was a reaction to their own reaction to the success of their previous work, ''Shockheaded Peter,'' a ghoulish horror-comedy for children and adults that became a worldwide hit. And though much of ''Hanging Man'' feels original and imaginative, a naggingly self-important note sounds through the show.

It becomes especially loud as the show wraps up with a plot twist that concludes the Braff story satisfyingly but with thematic pretension. The images onstage that end the show, involving projections on unscrolled screens, are perplexingly indeterminate. What are we looking at?

And in the concluding dialogue, we are left with a heavy-handed and rather simple-minded series of morals that might be expressed as aphorisms. Human life is part of nature, and creative art becomes part of nature as well. We are not to judge ourselves by the opinions of other people. It's not the creation that matters solely but the act of creation. Seize the day.

After much that is peppery and fun, the end of ''Hanging Man'' is disappointingly ho-hum.


Directed, designed and written by Phelim McDermott, Lee Simpson and Julian Crouch; co-designed by Phil Eddolls; lighting by Colin Grenfell; choreographed by Steve Kirkham; sound by Darron L. West; costumes by Stephen Snell; company stage manager, Helen Maguire; deputy stage manager, Robin Longley; sound technician and operator, Adrian Parker; rigger and flyman, Bruce Luckhurst; effects, Tim Preece. An Improbable Theater production, presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music 2003 Next Wave Festival. At the Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

WITH: Lisa Hammond, Nick Haverson, Richard Katz, Catherine Marmier, Rachael Spence and Ed Woodall.