"Cankerblossom' and "Sanctuary' at the Fringe

Each year the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival funds several companies and individual artists, in some cases to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. The Festival's curator, Nick Stuccio, scours the globe for worthy acts, finding theater companies from Poland, dance troupes from Australia, and solo artists from Colombia.

He also consistently favors a number of local companies—such as Pig Iron and choreographer Brian Sanders's Junk. Given the creative and commercial success of both organizations' output in last year's Festival, it doesn't surprise me that he commissioned new works from both troupes again this fall.

But in their current Cankerblossom and Sanctuary, respectively, neither company achieved anything worthy of anyone's time or money.

Cardboard baby

In Pig Iron's case, I can't even believe this company risked its nationally respected name on the (allegedly) family-friendly Cankerblossom. Tim Sawicki's script— about a 30-something couple who receive a flat, cardboard baby in the mail— starts boring and goes downhill from there.

A bird steals the baby and drags it down into the world of the "in-between" on the way to taking it to the "Flats" of Flatland, presumably where it would feel more at home. Without any explanation as to why two career-centered professionals would care about a baby they've had for all of two minutes, they set off on a journey to reclaim the infant—which, in its cardboard and magic marker rendering by Beth Nixon, looks oddly like a penis.

Along their journey, the pair encounters hostile postal clerks, a mice-catching traveler, and the "Evil Eye," all while getting sucked into the conflicts of this subterranean milieu (calling it a "universe" would give the company credit for actually creating such a world). Mimi Lien's interlocking sets and the slick stop-motion animation provide some enjoyment, but the bland writing disappoints at every turn. How can you even expect a child— let alone parents— to enjoy a show whose best joke concerns an underwater aquarium knight offering to let someone use his "shell phone"?

With the exception of local crooner Dave Sweeney, the three other members of the cast fail to provide even a rudimentary adequate performance. Eighty minutes later, Sawicki wraps up all the loose ends (the villainous "Evil Eye's" story, though apparently driving the parent's fear, receives the shortest shrift). None of the show's alleged allegories or metaphors— about when and why to have a baby or at what age kidults should grow up— received any greater attention.

I overheard a number of patrons exiting the theater trying to convince themselves that what they saw was full of interesting (if underdeveloped) metaphor, and that the actors intentionally gave flat performances to mirror the show's "flatland" theme. To paraphrase Sartre's comment about existential self-deception, people will invent all sorts of reasons as to how they haven't wasted their money. Cankerblossom ranks as the dumbest Live Arts Festival show I've seen in ten years of fringing.

Would you like to swing on a rope?

After last year's spectacular spectacle-driven Urban Scuba, I eagerly anticipated a solid show in Sanders's Sanctuary. Instead I saw one more example of how spectacle can just as easily buttress the strengths of a good work as attempt to cover up the faults of a bad one.

Sanctuary begins intriguingly enough. Under Terry M. Smith's eerie lighting, a lone monk enters, swinging flame-engulfed incense burners. Seven other robed penitents follow, bearing cinder bricks on their backs, breaking up study with moments of play and darting in and out of confessional boxes that later transform into a night club's backlit dance platforms. Several aerial movements look interesting but appear happenstance and do little to intrigue or engage otherwise.

In Urban Scuba, Sanders grounded the intense visuals around an ecological theme and milieu: survival in a swimming pool. Here, it's all artistry and no art. The 1980s era soundtrack provided a point of reference and kept my feet thumping, but I never bought Sanders's concept of a monastery as pre-HIV permissive gay nightclub-cum-bathhouse. And the Flashdance-inspired water-splashing— played out in an 80-foot-long trough that otherwise served no purpose— just looked silly, which I don't think was the point.

The one interesting idea— the similar sources and outcomes of religious flagellation and orgiastic ecstasy— Sanders only alludes to but never develops. Instead of expanding on any of his themes, he passed over them in favor of thematically disconnected handstands and cable-crucifixions. Really, if I wanted to see guys swinging from a rope with little sense or purpose, I'd watch an execution.