Review: Incorruptible by Paradox Players
by Michael Meigs

This cheery little satire might well have been titled Incorruptible - Men in Robes, marking a link to the comic style of the frankly inimitable Mel Brooks.  As was always the case in Brooks' hysterical historical spoofs, the intent wasn't so much to portray the epoch as to emphasize that the seven deadly sins have always been with us -- particularly those of greed, envy and lust, the ones most likely to make us act in ridiculous ways.

 

Georges Spelvineau, Frank Rios, Don Owen, Megan Minto (ALT photo)

Director Gary Payne gives us a quick orientation in the program, noting that in medieval times medicine was virtually non-existent and people sought miracles from the saints.  Churches and religious orders zealously guarded bones believed to be relics of saints, and they required donations from pilgrims and peasants wishing to pray for saintly intercession.

 

Times were bad.  Times were always bad (and, as Brooks famously quipped, "and the peasants were revolting!").  The comedy is set in a dismal little abby where relics of the local saint appear to have lost their effectiveness.  The abbot and his principal assistant Martin lament the fact that business is down, the cupboards are bare, and a rival institution of nuns is said to be doing a booming business with a new set of saintly bones recently delivered to them.  Don Owen as the abbot is mild, sweet-tempered and bewildered;  Georges Spelvineau as the lanky scribe Martin has lots of barbed lines, as well as an aha! and mistrustful glower that strongly recall the great comedian Paul Lynde.

 

 

Don Owen, Ariel Sauceda, Frank Rios, Georges Spelvineau (ALT photo)Into this setting come a rogue and his maiden.  Ariel Sauceda is Jack, the one-eyed itinerant performer and Megan Minto is Marie, the dainty miss with whom he's currently dallying.  The abbot and his company, in search of some crowd-pleasing attractions, witness with dour patience the couple's attempts at entertainment and eventually discover that our Jack sold the nuns that set of bones that proved so popular.  When Jack reveals that he simply dug the body up from the churchyard, one can almost hear the cling! of the cash register in Martin's head (too bad that such a sound effect would have been a 700-year anachronism).  Our monks contemplate the resources available to them in their own sanctified ground and, inevitably, they find the justification for going into the bone-exporting business big time.

 

 

 


Matt Burnett, Ariel Sauceda (ALT photo)

 

That's the basic joke of this show.  The order co-opts our Jack with threats of denunciation and sets him up as the wholesaler; confined to the monastery in those scratchy robes and without easy access to Marie, Jack must exercise his wits.  

 

Disguises, hide and seek, the blunders of the simple-minded brother Olf (Frank Rios), the guilty conscience of the young, lust-obsessed monk Felix (Matt Burnett), the threat and then the promise of a papal visit, the eruption onto the scene of the formidable Mother Agatha, the prioress possessing those miracle-working bones. . . . all these capers build upon one another.  The graveyard stands empty and the impatient Martin orders Jack to go out and get a fresh body, anybody's body, to serve as the never-decaying corpse of an "incorruptible," the most holy of saints.  And Marie happens to be hiding nearby, in a gunny-sack. . . .

 

(ALT photo)Director Gary Payne keeps the action lively and broad.  When under stress, our Jack tends to shout a bit too much -- after all, we have no trouble hearing him in the close quarters of Howson Hall at the Unitarian Universalist Church. The play is not in the least anti-Catholic, by the way, and just to prove it, after the knots in the plot are meticulously undone, the Holy Spirit delivers a miracle in the closing tableau.

 

 Frank Rios as thick-headed Olf shuffles consistently, often with his eyes on some unseen far horizon.  Matt Burnett, a master of youthful yearning and guileless expression, serves as the pure burnished foil to tarnished Jack.  The three women of the piece get to rant or to pout, but by and large the show's about the guys.  

 

You know -- the men in robes!

 

Review by webmaster, TheatreAustin, Yahoo groups, October 21

 

EXTRA

Click to view program for Incorruptible by the Paradox Players

 


Incorruptible
by Michael Hollinger
Paradox Players

October 01 - October 17, 2010
Howson Hall, Unitarian Universalist Church
4700 Grover Avenue
Austin, TX, 78756