I remember as a kid seeing footage of Hitler addressing the populace and the derogatory cartoons, for a few years before I learned the explanation. The odd way he spoke, there was a rhythm to it, and yet something deeply troubling. You needn’t pay careful attention to see there was something ridiculous in his demeanor, comical but pathological. Germany suffered crushing, degrading defeats and Adolph simply told them what they were desperate to hear. He also provided a marginalized, innocuous Community (the Jews) to blame for all of Germany’s tribulations. An unimaginable act of persecution and cowardice. He and a member of his inner circle devised a way to commit genocide without drawing attention.
In 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera premiered in Berlin. New York in 1931. The characters are composed of beggars, thieves, sex workers, a very smooth, ruthless criminal (Mack the Knife) and a corrupt cop (Tiger Brown). Salient points of this remarkably popular musical play are it’s unflinching details of the caste system that result in inhumanity, savagery, racism, destitution of the poorer classes. A kind of metaphysical cannibalism. Like the slave trade in the deep South, the culture subsisted on the exploitation and abuse of the oppressed, and therefore, no agency. Sex workers provide a necessary “service”, beggars rely on the better angels of strangers, thieves take what isn’t theirs. One way or another these practices are humiliating and contemptible.
Written and Directed by Matthew Posey, the sardonic Moving Creatures gets its jolt and depraved indifference from Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera. The costumes (somewhat opulent but crumby) the makeup (the freakish white pallor of zombies) suggest the privileged yet morally destitute, members of Baron Leopold McDoogal’s “cabinet”. Favored but essentially in servitude. Moving Creatures is set in Scotland, but The TPO’s devices of pulling us out of the narrative, the actors who step out of character to sing to us, directly dovetail with its groundbreaking predecessor.
The humor in Moving Creatures is darker than the gallows, merciless as the plague. It is, and turns on the mechanics of spoof. We could posit that the roots of humor emerge from irony. Even in the midst of the horrific, a well-timed gag can alleviate the sting. Waiter this stew is spoiled. I’m dying. Not to worry sir, you won’t be charged. Working from a vaudevillian vibe, Creatures has much to entertain. Imagine Charles Manson doing slapstick. Gradually despondency eclipses shtick.
Baron Leopold is depicted as a profoundly disturbed, self-absorbed, imbecile. An infant in the threads of a monarch. He’s surrounded by attendants. They are not servants, but neither do they have volition. They indulge his every whim by pretending obedience, but run ragged to prevent catastrophe. Like so many idiots who find themselves perched on the throne, his idea of utopia is a kingdom, a universe (?) where no one can say “No.”
If you haven’t guessed by now, Moving Creatures is an allegory. A way of addressing a particular situation by changing the milieu. Consider how theaters achieve clarity by setting The Taming of the Shrew in the 1940’s. Baron Leopold’s court has been stripped of their compassion. They have been reduced to Moving Creatures.
The cast of Moving Creatures is as poised and nuanced as they are versatile. Under Posey’s direction they have found a blend of the comical and the somber. Their movements (on a turntable!) are confident and intuitive. When you see a show at The Ochre House, the orchestration of music, song, balance, pathos, deadpan hilarity, is positively sublime.
These lunatics: they live to amaze, to enchant, to seduce, to tickle, to terrify. When they take their places on the stage, a shudder climbs up our spines, and theirs, too. Whenever I visit their realm of the fanciful, the strange, the beguiling, the hi-jinks, I know I will leave the theatre a different man than when I came in.
Ochre House Theater produced Moving Creatures, running May 3rd,24th, 2025. 825 Exposition Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75226. 214-826-6273. ochrehousetheater.org