In books and movies, and in theatre too, stories are delivered mostly in linear fashion with a beginning and an end and no distractions. But real life isn't like the movies. Our stories merge into other people's narratives, and they often have unsatisfactory conclusions. They are not "good" stories in any traditional sense. But that doesn't mean they are any less fascinating.
Forced Entertainment's latest show is a playful bundle of loose ends and cross-cutting narratives. There is only one microphone on stage, and the six performers must vie for it to get their voices heard and stories told. Stories that are preposterous, inane, moving and downright dull. They cut each other off in full flow, and create distractions and diversions. The entire show is like one of those inattentional blindness psychology experiments where subjects are told to concentrate on the points scored in a basketball match, and they do so with such application that they fail to notice a person in a gorilla suit walking across the court.
The Coming Storm needs to be watched at the edges. There is a continuous parade of crocodiles, walking trees and ghosts dancing that disrupt the flow of the rambling stories, changing the meaning of the narratives with often comical results. In the movies, musical scoring often signals to us what we should think and feel; here, it is more frequently distracting and unruly.
Well worth seeing, this is a clever, entertaining show, performed with Forced Entertainment's customary deadpan intensity and an uncanny ability to mine meaning and structure out of chaos. I could happily watch these performers for hours. But it lacks the tonal variation and emotional wallop that the company's best work delivers. Maybe The Coming Storm is still its own unfinished story?
