Ill Communication: Exchange at Café Mimosa

When I read Amelia Cook's review of Exchange at Café Mimosa, I decided that I'd go see it. And so it was off to the Bartell Theatre last night with The Dulcinea for the Mercury Players Theatre production.

Despite having a cousin who was involved with the Steppenwolf in Chicago back in the day and having a family that enjoys theatre and despite having been on several field trips to the Goodman while in grade school, I've never developed a healthy appetite for live theatre. Sure, I've seen Shakespeare at American Players Theatre several times but, in general, it takes something out of the ordinary to be happening on the stage to get my arse in a seat. Use 10' tall puppets and wears masks like Squonk Opera; paint yourself blue and throw marshmallows into your fellow actors' mouths as do The Blue Man Group; have naked bodies prance around like they do in The Living Canvas; dramatize the meeting of dorky scientists in Copenhagen; or parody Shakespeare. I don't know why, but I just need novelty in my theatre. Witnessing a death bring estranged family members back together or a chance meeting that brings two friends back together just doesn't cut it for me. So when I read the Isthmus review and read the words "surreal" and "non-linear", I just had to go see Exchange at Café Mimosa.

First, let me dispense with the whole non-linear bit. Time isn't demarcated very strictly in the play but it is quite linear. The Browns of Milwaukee and the Von Rupperstahls of Europe each get a mysterious phone call, they hop on their respective planes to a tropical island, and they all end up at the same hotel for a rendezvous and an exchange of boxes and it is all done in that order. No flashbacks, no flashforwards – it's all quite linear. As for the surreal aspect, yes it was surreal, but only moderately so. On a Lynchian scale, this is Twin Peaks stuff, not Inland Empire. Exchange at Café Mimosa is, after all, a comedy - a comedy which "explores the elaborate rituals of sex and marriage". And it does so with reptiles slithering about, a man from the Sandwich Islands in a gourd helmet who reputedly knows everything, and a parrot which knows more than it lets on.



While I thought the acting as almost uniformly great (I'm not a theatre critic so what do I know?) but kudos must go to Rachel Bledsoe for her portrayal of June Brown. The Wisconsin accent and her facial expressions were all wonderful. Her eyes were especially, well, expressive, in the way they bulged with excitement or narrowed as lips pursed in anger. Amy Sawyers played Marie-Louise Von Rupperstahl who got lost in the shuffle a bit. I found myself giving her my attention mostly when she was in one state of undress or another. This is not to say that Sawyers was bad but Marie-Louise's husband, Leopold, was played by Doug Holtz, who towers over Sawyer. I wonder if the play, scripted by Oana Cajal, called for such a size mismatch. Bledsoe and Al Hart, who plays Peter Brown are nearer in height to one another.

So, what was it all about? As I said above, the Browns and Von Rupperstahls separately receive packages and phone calls directing them to a tropical island for an exchange with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. June and Marie-Louise are both essentially bitches in heat and, perhaps tellingly, end up on all fours with their lovers entering from behind. There's wife-swapping but no Leopold and Peter and Marie-Louise and June action. The ladies' husbands alternate between concern for their penises and concern for the packages and their mission, as it is, of exchanging boxes at the required moment.

You've got four actors prancing around with lizard masks on who also serve as onlookers. During scenes with sex, the herpetological chorus begins to imitate the carnal dance from their perch. Similarly, the scantily-clad parrot in the hotel's dining room imitates the speech of the diners. The characters are thrown into confusion by hearing their words repeated for all to hear. By the end of the play, I thought that it wasn't so much about the rituals of sex and marriage as it was about the difficulty of communication in a relationship such as a marriage. The parrot creates dissonance; a Chinese man speaks but no one can comprehend; the Man in a Dark Suit and the Woman in a White Dress can only experience silent frustration with one another through most of the play. When they finally exchange words, neither can say anything comprehensible to the other – he wants her to speak grammatically correct English while she wants her heart to speak freely.

Personally, I think that Ms. Cook and Lindsay Christians of 77 Square either give the play credit for being more surreal than it truly is or are too timid to delve into it. There's too much repetition, binary opposites, and depths of metaphor to be plumbed and it's a shame that the reviewers basically said that the play was surreal and then began commenting on the acting, direction, etc. while not daring to tell their readers whether or not they actually got anything out of the play besides laughter. Did they actually find meaning in it? Did the story and the method by which it was told have any resonance for them?

I would like to see the play again as I didn't bring a notepad with me and I suspect that some choice bits of dialogue would help me flesh out my interpretation of it.

It will be at the Bartell through Saturday. Here's a promo: