As Man is to God at Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Some summers ago, while his TV writing partner took up a lunchtime gym regimen, Andrew Nicholls decided to write a long, strict-meter poem. The challenge: find a subject particularly resistant to tight dactylic tetrameter—a literary stunt in itself. Candidates included The Warren Commission Report, A Mathematician’s Apology, and Microsoft’s 1986 DOS Manual.

Then came Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, the modern archetype of doing something nobly ridiculous. Les Blank’s documentary Burden of Dreams, chronicling Herzog’s struggle to haul a 320-ton steamship over a mountain, suggested a third layer of Quixotic endeavor: turn the entire ordeal into verse.

Nicholls spent a year working from Blank, Maureen Gosling and Michael Goodwin’s continuity script and assorted sources. English, German, Spanish—and some operatic Italian—helped with the rhymes. Some days produced only part of one verse.

AS MAN IS TO GOD is Andrew Nicholls’ madcap hour-long recitation of his Klaus Kinski-laden literary streusel, complete with Fitzcarraldo color slides. Werner Herzog-style eating of one’s shoe optional.