Review - Prince Trevor Amongst The Elephants: Respect For Ridiculousness

The word "ridiculous" carries a certain reverence in theatre circles and when Duncan Pflaster calls his new play, Prince Trevor Amongst The Elephants, "a big epic naked ridiculous Shakespearean fairy tale play for adults," those in the know catch it as a bow to the late, great Charles Ludlum. For twenty years, until his AIDS-related death in 1987, playwright/actor Ludlum was the major force in a theatre movement that had Brendan Gill of The New Yorker pronounce, "This isn't farce. This isn't absurd. This is absolutely ridiculous!"

That magical basement theatre space at 1 Sheridan Square, home of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, hosted plays like Eunuchs of the Forbidden City, Bluebeard (about the search for a third genital) and the enormously successful The Mystery of Irma Vep using a theatrical style Pflaster describes as, "a theatre of the mind that makes treasure out of trash."

Duncan, whose plays I don't review anymore since he became a writing colleague at BroadwayWorld and a showtune singing buddy at Marie's Crisis, was first introduced to the plays of Charles Ludlam as an actor at the now defunct Florida Playwrights' Theatre ("Ludlam was venerated and oft-performed.") where he appeared in productions of The Grand Tarot and The Secret Lives of the Sexists, as well as stage-managing Irma Vep.

Inspired to read the playwright's complete works and use his style as an influence, Prince Trevor Amongst the Elephants, now playing as part of the Midtown InterNational Theatre Festival, is described by the author/director as, "a satire of contemporary politics, reflected in the magic mirror of fairy tales, injected with 42 ccs of Shakespearean verse and dissected through the Ridiculous Theatrical style of Charles Ludlam," as exemplified by these press notes describing the plot:

When good King Kartoffelpuffen gives up his kingdom to his oldest son Tater and marries off his other children for peace (and for political gain), Prince Trevor, his youngest son, trades places with his manservant Grumbelino in order to escape his fate and find his true love, Toby the stable boy. Meanwhile, will Princess Lana find love with King Soignée of the Blind Sybarites, or will she continue pining for Geoffrey, her lost love? Will Grumbelino make friends with his new wife Queen Bluebella of Chryselephantinople and her harem of eunuchs, or will he foolishly poke his nose into the Forbidden Ballroom? Can anyone keep King Tater from starting a new war and destroying all their Kingdoms? Are the rumored Elephants of Style more than just a fable?

"While writing Prince Trevor Amongst the Elephants, it was in deliberate homage to (Ludlam's) heightened style, which owes something to Brecht, something to Shakespeare - I mined the past for plot tropes and then turned them on their heads. I pulled out the awful puns and the bravura acting roles and the full-frontal nudity... I hope I'd have done him proud."

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In other news, I hear that when Primary Stages premieres A.R. Gurney's new play, Buffalo Gal, the preview performances on July 22nd and 23rd have been designated as Pay What You Can nights.

And when you consider the typical audience for an A.R. Gurney play, Pay What You Can should come out to several thousand dollars per ticket!

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