Ah, what to do with the family curse: gore (i want to disappear) from Tiny Bear Jaws. A Fringe review, Theater News

The opening gambit of Elena Belyea’s stunningly theatrical gore (i want to disappear) is happening when you enter the theatre. Four actors are marking out a light-up grid onstage in abrupt right angles: sudden rushes and sudden stops. The quartet, who never make eye contact, are together a kind of human perpetual motion machine, choreographed by the gods. Then their limbs begin to quiver, as if they’re standing on electrified ground.

Is that the curse that hangs over the House of Atreus in the Tiny Bear Jaws compelling account of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia? Is it the inheritance of the ancient Greece ground zero of grief, grudge, fury, and vengeance where gods and human generations mingle, and have at ‘er, on an un-level playing field?

What follows is a 75-minute version of The Oresteia which feels amazingly expansive not compressed, and the smallness of the superb cast counts, dramatically. All four actors are meaningfully double-cast. And they step forward together as the Chorus — in front of a bank of red-coloured energy drink bottles that are the blood supply for a story soaked in violence. “We’re the Furies, don’t fuck with us.”

Sarah Emslie, Autumn Strom, Geoffrey Simon Brown, Kristen Padayas in ‘gore (i just want to disappear), Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo by Brianne Jang

What follows — thanks to powerful performances by Sarah Emslie, Geoffrey Simon Brown, Autumn Strom, and Kristen Padayas — is a group portrait of a close but violently fractious modern “family.” And the non-binary kids  look for comfort and self-fulfilment in “chosen families” as they struggle to find themselves, in a frame that’s too tight. The House of Atreus makes your own dysfunctional family look like a sitcom picnic.

In a particularly fascinating double-assignment Padayas, who’s terrific in both roles, is both the matriarch Clytemnestra, a widow in a no-win situation with troublesome kids,  and the gay lover of her son Orestes (Brown). Orestes inherited the kingdom, and he feels cornered by expectation. “But what if I want to be a hockey player, or a farmer … or a bride?”

Brown also plays the family’s unwelcome lodger Cassandra the oracle, whose gift of prophecy is also a curse, since she’s doomed to never be believed, “gaslit for all eternity.” And Electra, the neglected trans daughter, is played in the formative stages of being a real force of nature, is played by Strom as a moody teenager. “Hey, Calliope is hosting an open-mic night in a cave. Wanna come?” Emslie has the tricky assignment of speaking for both parental and offspring generations simultaneously, as dad Agamemnon and the daughter the gods demand he kill. “A family is a group of people who love each other till it’s no longer convenient.” And then what do you do with your inheritance? That’s the question.

So, yes, gore (i want to disappear) grows outward, in a particularly contemporary non-binary way. And one of Belyea’s most impressive achievements — they’re a witty writer — is finding a language, and a cadence, that are both modern and somehow don’t lose the sense of ancient roots. And the fun — yup, it’s fun, too — is that the party continues in the afterlife. “I’m taking drum lessons….”

With lighting, music, and stagecraft to match. Highly recommended!