Austin Downtown Arts Magazine
Theatre
Flame Failure: Trust Nothing
by Caroline Hicok
The beginning of man as intellectual creature can be traced
to the first asking of the question "What should I believe?"
You could see a play any day of the week that attempts to
answer that question. Dan Bonfitto's 12-part industrial espionage
series questions that question by answering with an ambiguous
"Nothing." If that makes no sense, you're using
your senses well. If the statement "nothing's true"
were true, then the statement would be false because it has
provided truth. This is the Liar's Paradox, and it is not
the last one you will find in Flame Failure: The Silent War.
Episode 5, like every episode of Flame Failure, begins in
darkness. Its characters sneak all around you through the
catacombs where a cult called the Mechanical Fellowship offers
purity through labor. Some are cultists; some are agents working
for the government; and some are members of the Syndicate,
an organized crime group. Their struggle is for possession
of a book of ultimate knowledge based on Goedel's theory of
Inconsistent Systems, the modern mathematical legacy of the
Liar's Paradox. The book is an appropriate Holy Bible for
contention between these characters, any of whom might tell
you "We are all liars."
As you are slowly re-introduced to the light, your natural
reaction would probably be to identify the setting so that
you may place yourself and the characters. Give up now. The
scene is a futuristic one illuminated by television sets and
images of medieval Catholic pageantry. The characters are
all antagonists in an epic with no heroes. Be careful when
trying to discern who's working for whom. One of the conditions
of The Silent War is "trust no one." Some of the
characters have multiple affiliations among the three groups.
The question of loyalty is further muddied in a world where
computers interface directly with the brain and an "implant"
can cause anyone to be controlled by someone else.
It's true, the whole series is a "Huckleberry Beanstalk"
-- a game of hide-and-seek introduced in Episode Two in which
the thing hidden must be in plain view. But the Downstage
Players are a dedicated group who keep the wheels turning
in this twisted Trojan Horse. Between the bloody fight scenes,
beautifully choreographed by Paul Schimmelman, the unconventional
use of stage and set, and a "plot so twisted that the
X-Files is envious," there's enough meat here for any
Austinite hungry for an action-packed theater experience.
Episode 5: Filter for Zeal ends with the elusive Book in
the trash. What is its potential for whoever may be so lucky
as to possess it? Episode 6: The Algebra of Sacrifice will
address that question, but don't expect an answer. In a world
fighting for order under inconsistent systems, there is no
such thing as absolute truth.
Flame Failure will continue at The Public Domain Theater
at 807 Congress Avenue the last two weekends of every month
through May '98. For reservations, call 459-3825. Check out
the website first at members.aol.com/DSPlayers.
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