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How do you perform the anatomy of an intimate relationship? For writer Jenny Magnus, the partnered life is apparently like a Purgatorial auto trip: where you get lost, sing songs, argue over directions, face crackups, and play bleakly comic mind games along the way.
"The Trips: A Madras Parable", at Cleveland Public Theatre through February 1st, is ably performed by Magnus and her long-time collaborator and partner Beau O'Reilly of Chicago's award-winning Curious Theatre Branch. Don't let the obscure subtitle put you off: "The Trips" is no abstract experimental meditation. This couple's offbeat, articulate sparring is instantly recognizable. They're survivors of an ancient, ongoing gender war, and their journey is both funny and sharply unsettling.
Costumed in matching black tuxedos and chalky white makeup, O'Reilly and Magnus are physically an odd couple. He's hulking and pop-eyed, with wild bushy eyebrows and a huge head -- she's slight, with dark cropped hair, like a pale-faced child swimming inside a man's suit. The androgyny of her look only emphasizes Magnus's femaleness: it's Disney's Beauty and the Beast, dressed as Laurel and Hardy.
Watching them work together is both pleasure and pain: the mixed messages are a consequence of their intimacy. It's deadpan relationship comedy, but there's an edge, a casual brutality under the banter. We see her hunch behind the wheel, physically shrinking under his cheery cutting remarks as he expands into more and more space. "First you're envying my sense of direction, then you claim that I'm obscuring your light", he complains. The painstaking deconstruction of her character flaws are a fair topic of conversation, but anything personal about him is taboo. A "theoretical" exploration of his feelings leads to an explosive litany: "I want what I want when I want it!", he snaps, over and over. Their existential vaudeville is full of crossed communications and wrong turns, and the crackup that comes seems as inevitable as it is sudden.
As performers, Magnus and O'Reilly are perfectly in tune with each other's rhythms, and vocally they're well-matched. Both are accomplished singer/songwriters -- they're also collaborators in a musical performance project, Maestro Subgum and the Whole -- and several of the show's highlights come in their a cappella duets. Magnus has a gorgeous voice, and O'Reilly a powerful bluesy growl. When they tear into "Proud Mary", complete with elaborate vocal percussion, it's a grand hoot, while the final dance duet, "dreaming of a more perfect you", is wistful and haunting.
The evening is brief -- it's a spare 50 minutes, perhaps more appropriate as a late-night one-act -- but nevertheless it doesn't feel slight. There is a core of truth that gives it emotional weight, like a dream that leaves you with an unsettling revelation about your life. Though the material is often discomfiting -- I saw more than one squirming couple in the audience -- it's sharp, original writing, performed with precision and brio by talented collaborators.
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