Rave About the Machine, Renegades of Junk

By Boogie Brown

When I was a young lad (today, I’m a full grown leprechaun), my beloved psychotic aunt would often take me to the Liberty Science Center, a hands-on, interactive playground of a museum that purported to make learning FUNdamental.  At the center of LSC stood this impressive structure made up of coiled metal, wooden chutes, pulleys, wires, and brass metal balls.  It was a Rube Goldberg machine according to the handy placard beside it.  Wikipedia describes such a machine as “a deliberately over-engineered apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually using a chain reaction.”  It’s kind of like that board game Mouse Trap or that rudimentary alarm system you once fashioned to protect your valuable stash of comic books and Ninja Turtles.  In any case, I was fascinated.  Its inherent duality of complexity and simplicity just tickled my imagination…tickled it with a broad quill feather.  Oh yes, that’s the spot…

See Rube Goldberg machines in action:

It was at this precise moment, at the tender age of 9, when I first quietly thought to myself, “You know what theater could use more of?  Rube Goldberg machines.”  Some sixteen years later, amidst alcohol binges, post suburban ennui, and the discovery of fried oreos, my silly little contemplation became reality…and how beautifully absurd that reality is.  Cut to Manhattan’s HERE Arts Center, a veritable testing ground for avant garde theater, and their delicious summer romp machines machines machines machines machines machines machines.  Yes, that’s 7 machines because why use only one (even though it’s already pluralized) when you could be using 7?

machines x7 presents the bizarre but equally hilarious story of three childish xenophobes self-quarantined in their own one-room domicile and engrossed by dozens of Rube Goldberg machines.  They literally spend have the half the show using said machines to prepare breakfast.  Coffee pours down through an array of tubes where it spills into a pot on top of a scale.  The accumulated coffee eventually weighs the pot down which releases a mechanism that toasts the bread and cooks the eggs.  Or something like that, assuming the machines actually worked.  With all this happening live on stage, Rube Goldberg yields a 20% success rate leaving the actors to shine in their own improvisations—spending 5 minutes picking up toast off the floor with a spatula ducktaped to the end of a 4-foot fishing pole–while underscoring the wonderful unpredictability of theater.  The audience is then left to question the point of all this malfunctioning “technology” that simultaneously enables laziness and makes simple tasks unnecessarily difficult.  Do I smell metaphor?  It’s definitely not burnt toast.

The paranoid trio waits all day preparing for the arrival of intruders that of course never really show up.  It’s oddly reminiscent of both Samuel Beckett and Linus’ Great Pumpkin. When the group starts questioning whether or not the intruders are really outside in the rain, The Chief Commander (yes, that is the character’s official name) assures that they are but they can’t be seen in their “rain camouflage.”

The Chief Commander, played with superb wit and comedic timing by Quinn Bauriedel, leads this household of fools as an amalgam of Jimmy Stewart and that other idiot-in-chief George W.  He’s joined by verbose yes-man Phineas, played by Geoff Sobelle whose performance as a one-man Renaissance festival enlightened by the best longbottom leaf in all the Shire is inspired.  Rounding out the group is Liam (pronounced Lee-um by The Chief and Lye-ahm by Medieval Phineas), played by the brilliantly subtle Trey Lyford, serves as the military expert but is more like a six-year-old playing GI Joe and only speaks in Michael Winslow-like sound effects.  Seriously, I thought at one point he was gonna explain the difference between the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps.  (Space Balls anyone?)  Truly an ensemble performance, the three weave together physical comedy, improvisation, and onstage chemistry better than the Harlem Globetrotters.

Ultimately, obsession with technology and security consumes the outrageous cast (satire anyone?).  Chaos heightens as their suspicions ultimately turn inward and all hell breaks loose. And of course, when the anarchy rises, so too does the ridiculousness of the machines.  I feel pretty secure saying this is the only play where you’ll see a quill pen attached to a rubber hand attached to typewriter being used to write a letter.  Or a set of rubber gloves attached to a spinning horizontal pole attached to an electric fan for purposes of petting a cat.  But like all Rube Goldberg machines, despite the absurdity of it all (or perhaps because of it), machines machines machines machines machines machines machines still stands as an immensely creative and comic achievement.  I was in as much awe and giddy as my 9-year old self.  And usually that only happens at comic book conventions.

Unfortunately, due to the lateness of this review machines x7 has finished its New York run, but be on the look out for anything from the group that spawned it–the incredibly inventive collaborative rainpan 43, a couple of classicly trained clowns (Sobelle and Leyford) most well known for their 2005 hit all wear bowlers (the hats, not the beer-bellied PBA stars) and their penchant for lower case titles.

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