Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Forced Entertainment’s AND ON THE THOUSANDTH NIGHT… is six hours (!) worth forced tedium

• By drediman
• September 10, 2018
• No Comments

The company of Forced Entertainment’s “And on the Thousandth Night” at NYU Skirball.

This weekend at NYU Skirball, I had the unfortunate task of sitting through six hours of tedium. This came in the form of British theater company Forced Entertainment’s And on the Thousandth Night…, a seemingly never-ending riff on the classic One Thousand and One Nights. The performance, which was understandably given only a single performance given its sheer length, commenced Saturday at midnight at ended at 6am on Sunday morning – a long night’s journey into dawn, quite literally.

Despite its epic running time, And on the Thousandth Night… is essentially at its core a simple game of association and improvisation, played ad nauseam. The piece started off with one actor quietly muttering “once upon a time”, at which time he proceeded to utter one of the tales from the mammoth “Arabian Nights” collection. Through the duration of the show, none of the eight performers were permitted to complete their stories, as at any point in their narrative, another actor could halt it by using the word “stop”, thereby claiming the stage for their own story. Although amusing initially, the show quickly devolved into mostly inane improvised stories, none of which exceeded only a few minutes before they were interrupted (most lasted less than a minute). To my dismay, I soon realized that there would be no dramatic or emotional payoff from a micro/story-level perspective, and that the culmination of these tales would sadly have an impact close to nil.

I’m one not to shy away from durational theater. In fact, I count Taylor Mac’s day-long A 24-Decade History of Popular Music among the most – if not the most – profound experiences of my life. I also thrilled to last season’s pair of Tony-winning two-part plays, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the Angels in America revival, which respectively had total run times of six and eight hours. However, if we’re to sit through this amount of time, there needs to be some sort of catharsis. And on the Thousandth Night…, unfortunately afforded no such thing, despite the completely game, even heroic, efforts of its eight relentlessly persistent, idiosyncratically charismatic performers, who each donned a red cape (or blanket?) and a yellow paper crown. Maybe I’m missing the point of it all, but I thought their show was as flimsy as their crowns.

SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED

AND ON THE THOUSANDTH NIGHT…
Off-Broadway, Play
Forced Entertainment at NYU Skirball
6 hours (without an intermission)
Closed