Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames
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It’s tempting to think that Johnson’s broader canvas is a function of his years writing novels and short fiction, genres in which the theatrical constraint of compression doesn’t necessarily apply and in which the writer may move seamlessly from interior monologue to dialogue to descriptive passages. But it’s also true that Johnson’s fiction, with its heightened, comically grotesque situations and quirky exchanges between characters, lends itself well to staging. Campo Santo, the company where he’s a playwright in residence, recognized this four years ago when it staged several stories from his collection Jesus’ Son, months before the film based on the book was released. From that collaboration with the company–one of the most passionate and daring ensembles in the Bay Area–has arisen a challenging, compelling series of plays that captures the spiritual exhaustion of American life in the 21st century with compassion, wit, and a sense of horror.
Locally, Viaduct Theater and director Whitney Blakemore have made Johnson’s work their calling card. Last fall they produced Hellhound on My Trail–the first in Johnson’s trilogy about a troubled family. Now they tackle his second play, Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames. (The third installment, Soul of a Whore, just closed at Campo Santo and will be produced by Viaduct later this year.) Shoppers picks up where Hellhound left off, but it’s not necessary to know the first play in order to appreciate the second.
The only character who seems to live outside this loop is Marcy, the “retarded” woman Bro has been shacking up with for five years, since he jumped bail. Marcy shows up near the end of the play in a weirdly poetic scene decked out like Kali, the Indian goddess of destruction, after a “spiritual makeover.” Yet she’s fundamentally innocent and incapable of comprehending Bro’s cruelty and deceit. Fortunately Adrienne Smith avoids the trap of playing her as a cloying idiot savant. Instead her earnestness suggests what the world looks like to someone who seeks answers only in the here and now–not in wretched memories of the past or rapidly vanishing dreams of the future.
