Review: ADRIFT: A MEDIEVAL WAYWARD FOLLY by Happenstance Theatre

In Medieval Times, a sudden, home-wrecking storm sets five peasants aimlessly adrift until they come upon a new land from where they can begin afresh – finding faith and questioning it, sowing and reaping crops, entertaining themselves and each other with magic, music, and dance, living, and dying.

When the world comes to an end, what comes next? When all is lost, what do you do? And why? And what comes after that? In the latest creation by Happenstance Theatre, now in its 20th year, these questions of enormous gravity and magnitude are juggled and puzzled over in striking images and delightful vignettes until they come to feel weightless and carefree. Characters from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and classic tarot cards are given three-dimensional form in this dreamlike work that effortlessly melds the fresh with the fundamental. 

At this point, the individual artists that make up Happenstance—Artistic Co-Director/Executive Director Sabrina Selma Mandell, Artistic Co-Director Mark Linden Jaster, Gwen Grastorf, Sarah Olmsted Thomas, and Alex Vernon—feel more like the interconnected limbs of some great and goofy beast, moving not in unison but in a more impossibly imperfect harmony. There's a telepathic synergy that courses through their interplay that could never come about from one isolated production, one that simply necessitates years of collaboration and trust. 

In ADRIFT, each plays vital role after vital role. Even in this somewhat formless collage that eschews any traditionally linear narrative, every member of the troupe carves out a recognizable presence.  

Jaster is a veritable one-man band, frequently tooting away at one recorder or another one-handed gallivanting across the stage, or performing perfectly timed live foley on a mishmash of auxiliary percussion. Thomas brings the house down as a dancing, rock-and-rolling demon that energetically ricochets up and down, back and forth, never tiring. Vernon whips out some absolutely masterful sleight of hand from absolutely nowhere, all hidden behind a slapsticky demeanor that infuses each of his characters with life and verve. Grastorf creates some of the most preciously ethereal moments in the entire show, strumming on a lap harp and leading the audience in song. Weaving it all together is Mandell who acts up a storm, painting scenes with expressions alone, and who subtly drives home the core themes and motifs throughout. 

So much grander than the sum of its parts, ADRIFT resists ever being cornered into one small thing. Wondrously designed, it flits from Pythonesque sketch to a moving song to a whimsical piece of stage music or puppetry. Happenstance's techniques are endlessly inventive – every move made confidantly in full view of the audience and yet so much is still head-scratchingly out of this world. 

This magic is not just in the impeccable stagecraft. ADRIFT is also impressively written, well thought out and paced. Incredibly restrained, ADRIFT gets across so much with as few words as necessary, never shying away from dark topics but also never too proud to indulge in the silly and childish. In the end, it's the powerful, cohesive ideas at the heart of the piece that keep the otherwise chaotic and scatterbrained hour-and-a-half-long variety show firmly rooted and attention-holding, culminating in something timeless yet of this moment, thrilling for children and tear-jerking for adults, all contained in a hand-crafted little profound and preposterous world that Happenstance Theatre has imagined into reality. 

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