Based on his own dream, Aaron Hendry, artistic director of Not Man Apart, wrote and directed The Superhero and his Charming Wife, running through May 18th at the 18th Street Performing Arts Center in Santa Monica.
This vibrant performance includes incredible dance and physical moves by an absolutely first rate cast. You’ll never look at sheets of plastic the same way again after you see them transformed into living waves. Performers dance on boards carried by stagehands/background performers, there are leaps, dances, and feats of daring-do as passionate as any that could be created by a caped hero.
The fear of the unknown is the theme; demons, witches, wives that appear and disappear, whether a person is more than who he or she appears to be – all of these elements are addressed. Choreographed superbly by Michelle Broussard, you have a superhero who works for a living just like your average cop on the street, and his volatile marriage, made the more so by the fact that his wife can morph into different women. Played by Jones Welsh, the superhero craves order and reason; his wife Julie is either simply looking for herself or under the spell of a witch or demon.
This is both a lively if surreal hero’s journey and a pop cultural tour de force, complete with off-the-wall humor and fierce action.
Not strictly plotted, this is a dreamscape and visual landscape on which emotions from fear to heroism to passion are writ large, scenes and set pieces resemble pages torn from a graphic novel, and the collective experience of the performances is magical and mysterious, evocative of the true superhero which is the human heart.
THE SUPERHERO AND HIS CHARMING WIFE runs through May 15 Friday/ Saturday at 8:30 p.m.; and May 8 and 15 at 3:30 p.m. at Highways Performance Space at 18th Street Arts Center, 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, 90404. For reservations and information, call (310) 315-1459 or visit http://highwaysperformance.org/.
- Genie Davis; Photos: courtesy of production