Language of Angels is an intriguing piece of experimental theater that's rather hard to describe - think Final Destination, only with interpretive dance. The play follows the story of a group of nine teenagers linked together by the disappearance of their friend, Celie, somewhere in the labyrinthine tunnels of an underground cave in rural North Carolina. After she disappears, the others are killed off one by one, whether it be by suicide, accident or "natural" causes - and it is left to the audience to decide whether their deaths are caused by a curse, revenge from beyond the grave or something altogether stranger.
The plot is far more than a simple ghost story, and the characters are far more than throwaway roles from a teenage horror flick. Through a series of scenes and monologues, we hear the voices of the teenagers from the past, present and future - their faded memories, doubts and guilt told in rustic dialect that is strangely, brusquely poetic in its inarticulateness.
The play's most notable feature, however, is not its plot, but its unique, surreal style that puts you in a trance and doesn't let you go until the applause startles you out of it at the very end. The stage is minimalist, nearly bare - it consists of only two platforms: a ghostly, semi-transparent tunnel and a tree. The characters' passionate, dialectic monologues are interspersed with silent, surreal scenes of dance and synchronized movement set to eerie music. Apparitions walk across the stage, angel feathers rain from the sky and supernatural elements are included so subtly that the audience is not sure what they have seen, only of the effect it has had on them. The style was inspired, according to the director's notes, by Japanese Noh theater, and one would never think that rural small-town American slang - as western as it gets - could blend successfully with the lyricism of classical Eastern theater. But, somehow, the play's odd dynamic seamlessly fuses colloquial storytelling and the poetic physical movement of Noh theater. The result, for better or worse, is something wholly original.
When the trance ended, I left the theater unsettled, but thoroughly unsatisfied. Although the answer to the mystery of the girl's disappearance is eventually revealed, the audience soon gathers that this is not the point of the play - this is not Clue, and solving the mystery does not signal the end of the game. I left the theater perplexed, wanting to know more about each of the characters whose thoughts the audience was allowed only to briefly glimpse, wanting to know the explanation for all of the supernatural elements left ambiguous. Although frustrating, I believe this aspect was intentional, allowing the audience to identify with the characters's confusion and to come to their own conclusions - and that's one thing you can't say about Final Destination.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
