January 29–February 5, 1998

theater

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The Campers and Other Adventures

Second Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., through Feb. 8, 563-4330

Robert Christophe is clearly one of Philadelphia’s theatrical treasures. We always knew he could really act, and his recent one-man show, Michigan Impossible, revealed he could really write, and now The Campers and Other Adventures showcases his hilarious gift for pantomime—not just the trapped-in-a-box, mime-a-dozen stuff, but vaudeville with a mind, stories told through an eloquent body. This is an evening full of intelligence and laugh-out-loud entertainment.

Christophe is teamed with Kim Waldauer (a Seinfeld’s Elaine look-alike), who co-wrote, co-directed and co-acts the show (along with a necessary but not very impressive supporting ensemble). “The Campers” provides the evening’s first act. This is an extension of a short piece the pair did for the Fringe Festival in September, and shows us a couple’s day and night in the woods, complete with all the expectable mishaps of unfoldable maps, exploding tents and forgotten can openers (Waldauer’s tuna-can sucking is alone worth the price of admission—as is the sleeping bag sequence, making the two of them look like balletic elephant seals). It’s all performed without words, and magically communicates its plot and its characters. (The only complaint I have is that most of the action takes place close to the floor, which in the Second Stage is next to impossible to see if you’re not on the first or second rows.)

The second half of the evening is made up of little vignettes—ranging from the silent to the spoken, with some in between. “The Same Time Next Week,” about a therapist and his patient working on communication skills, speaking almost entirely in sound effects and gestures, is terrific, although best in this category of nearly-mime is the last, “The Best Seats in the House,” about a pen-clicking theater critic in an audience of coughers, candy-eaters and whisperers. Christophe’s transformation from an eager and interested spectator to a venomous reviewer as his seatmates plague him out of pleasure is remarkable and subtle. It’s also probably the most sympathetic portrait of a critic any playwright has ever written.

The pure mime pieces, absolutely silent, are sometimes charming (“Umbrella Karma,” a piece about two strangers tyrannized by an umbrella during a sudden shower) and sometimes moving (“Another Pantomime,” about a mother visiting an absent daughter’s room), and sometimes made no sense to me (“A Pantomime,” about a writer, an archer and a bird, is beautiful to look at but didn’t cohere). The pieces with words, the playlets, struck me as the weakest elements of the evening, including both Christophe’s “The Protestor,” about a man who chains himself to a factory fence, and Waldauer’s “The Perfect Fit,” about a woman trying to buy a pair of jeans. Neither one rose above the obvious and neither one capitalized on the talents of these two talented actors.

All acting probably depends on astute study of human behavior, but this particular kind of theater is so shrewd and so discerning in its details that you don’t even notice the skill. A great night out.

-Toby Zinman