College students are of one of three minds concerning the movie "Donnie Darko" (2001): those who have seen it, and swear by it; those whose friends made them see it and don't know what the big deal is; and those who have never seen it and are sick of hearing people talk about it.
Despite any preconceptions of the movie, the theatrical version of "Donnie Darko" is worth the trip. Before seeing the play, it's a challenge to envision how something so cinematic might translate to the stage, but the show's producers succeed in making "Donnie Darko" no less strange, and no less compelling, on stage.
The story is based on the 2001 indie movie-turned-modern-cult-classic, which follows Donnie Darko (played by Dan McCabe), a teenage boy who must deal with school, a crazy family, his first girlfriend and the apocalypse.
The story begins as the responsibility to save the world falls on Donnie - literally falls on him - in the form of a jet engine that crashes into his bedroom. The event incites a month of soul-searching and painful adolescent moments made only stranger by the presence of Grandma Death and Frank, a hallucinatory bunny.
That's the setup, and it's hard to say where the story goes from there. Part satire and part surrealist, "Donnie Darko" captures the intersection of blasting Pepsi commercials and tangent universes, making the audience hyper-aware of the oddity of suburban life.
What makes the stage version of "Donnie Darko" so compelling is the continuity that the medium affords. There is an inherent organization to film - scenes begin and scenes end. The play version of "Donnie Darko" breaks through that organization with scenes that overlap and slide together, allowing characters to linger onstage long after they have delivered their lines.
In one key moment, for example, Donnie has a conversation with Frank while the rest of his English class remains onstage, swaying in their seats. Later, Donnie is in his therapist's office while on the other side of the stage his mother sits alone, drinking.
The effect of all this is that audience members, like Donnie, have trouble locating themselves chronologically in the story. Past, present and future physically come together onstage. In a story so much about time and how we progress through it - or get lost in it - this setup is especially fitting.
The setup also forces audience members to examine the line between presence and absence. At one point Donnie talks to his sister about his girlfriend, Gretchen (Flora Diaz), and in the corner of the stage Gretchen stands, hood on, biting her nails. How far does a person's interior world extend, and what is the difference between how we perceive others and how they really are? In "Donnie Darko" this division is fluid and navigable, but viewers, like Donnie himself, must get a little lost on the journey.
If angsty, philosophical questions don't sound appealing, there may still be reason to see "Donnie Darko." Set on a sunken stage in the new Loeb Theater lined with bleachers, the play is remarkable from a purely aesthetic standpoint. The fusion of the banal and the surreal in the theater is menacing and, unlike the movie, encompassing.
On entering the theater, viewers are aware of a mobile above stage with a house and plane slowly revolving in the air. As the play begins, Frank stands in his bunny suit on a ledge, a bright red lit panel behind him, hovering over a family dinner. Because viewers look down at the stage instead of up at it, they feel even more acutely in the same room as the characters, and Frank and the mobile hover not just over the characters but over the viewers themselves.
Red lights and green lights surface in surprising ways, giving the audience something new to look at. Even Donnie's average bedroom transforms into a strange parallel universe. This is the idea: Somehow, the "normal" seems to be always plotting in the background, ready to rise up against us when we are at PTA meetings or eating dinner - in other words, when we least expect it.
For die-hard movie fans, the play is a different imagining and utilizes a different medium. Though the acting is good, the relationships are less fleshed out because of time constraints, and occasionally it feels like someone skipped ahead a few too many frames.
The heart of the story, that mixture of fear and loss that creeps up between talent shows and school assemblies, however, is still there, and the play lets viewers feel it just as deeply as Donnie and his companions. When a performer looks up at Donnie, standing among the audience, and proclaims, "This boy is afraid," it's obvious that he isn't just talking to Donnie.
