Longstanding collaborators Mac Wellman and Steven Mellor reunite for the New York premier of one act "Muazzez", co-presented by The Chocolate Factory and PS122 as part of the 9th annual COIL Festival.
Wellman, a celebrated Downtown playwright and author, and Mellor, an accomplished onstage and onscreen actor, return to their Obie-award winning partnership in sharing this selection from Wellman’s 2008 collection, "A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds".
At the beginning of the play, Mellor, wearing a neutral button down and dress pants, is seated at a simple table in the sparse, whitewashed cinder-block studio of The Chocolate Factory Theater in Long Island City. The set reflects the image of Mellor’s character, an Abandoned Cigar Factory on the post-civilized asteroid Muazzez.
If Samuel Beckett’s walls could talk, they would likely release a stream of consciousness similar to Mellor's ACF. In a monologue directly addressing the audience, the ACF shares the ins and outs of his daily life on Muazzez, including the gossip and philosophy of his referred, offstage frenemy, Finn.
Among the ACFs of Muazzez, which are, apparently, abundant, this ACF is gifted with two tools: a telephone booth and a zygodactyl bird claw. When the two are mentioned, Mellor repeats the same gestures, respectively pointing to his head for the telephone booth and forming an independent claw by stiffening his wrist, then flexing his fingers. Wellman gives his character these tools to dig deep, attempting to uncover and grasp the secrets of Muazzez.
Mellor’s physical comedy and line delivery vivifies Wellman’s puckish text. The monologue astutely navigates absurdity, swerving between the Muazzezian and the Earthly worlds. For instance, Mellor wistfully delivers the line, “We would be as thistles in the wind.” After a beat, he looks down, dismissively spits, “Whatever thistles are,” pauses, looks right, and adds, “Whatever wind is.”
Like a traditional clown, the ACF’s earnest tragedy reads as comedy, juxtaposing his urgency with nonsensical phrases. In a sweeping gesture, Mellor brings attention to the neatly stacked script in front of him, silencing his monologue to pause, pick up a pencil, and make a change to a “misprint," addressing, as he refers to it, “a perennial fly in the ointment of the cosmic text.”
Wellman’s “cosmic texts” can be challenging to produce considering their dense subtext and playful language, so it is a treat that the playwright has directed this production. Wellman’s inner poet shows in his elastic word play as the audience is bounced between the two worlds. In a moment of rumination, the ACF considers, "Is it not in the nature of a world to be a small world?" In that moment, it seems possible that a group of Abandoned Cigar Factories dotting the landscape of Muazzez is not so different from an audience in a small theater in Long Island City.
Performances of "Muazzez" have concluded, but the COIL Festival continues through January 26th. For more information on the festival, click here.
A part of Performance Space 122's Coil Festival, which continues through Jan. 26.
