The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: Out & About

Less than a minute into their show, cast members from Forest Theatre of Pure Form dance onto a stage amidst a bedlam of props similar to a drug-induced dream, when suddenly the surreal feeling is ripped to a halt, as a booming loud speaker pours out these words: "Ladies and gentlemen, attention please! This play, Paradise Hotel, must be preceded by an announcement which may well prove disturbing to certain members of this audience. But while no one desires to offend, this risk must be taken. All audiences must now be informed that this play, Paradise Hotel, is not, in fact, Paradise Hotel, but is in truth a much more disturbing and possibly illegal play entitled 'Hotel Fuck.' For this we apologize ..."

Such are the beginnings of Forest Theatre of Pure Form's latest creation, "Paradise Hotel." Originally written and directed by Richard Foreman in 1999, the play is brimming with sexual references that would make even the most burlesque blush.

Director Cal Clements explained the play can actually be summarized in the psychoanalysis studies of Jacques Lacan, in which he states "the Unconscious is structured like a language" and is as complex and structurally sophisticated as the conscious.

"It has a lot to do with paradoxes of desire where people think they know what they want, but what they really want is to be safe from their desire," Clements said. "And the various hotels - Hotel Paradise, Hotel Fuck, Hotel of Beautiful Roses -sort of offers up each desire to the various characters and it turns out that when faced with their desire, they are reluctant to confront it."

With character names such as Ken Pussy Puss, Tony Turbo and what Clements explains as a "much more post-modern analysis of the mind in which terms are oscillating in repetitive patterns and words like 'fuck' are exploded in this play so that they get used in every possible figuration," it is difficult to imagine anything hiding below the surface of what seems to be the play's skin of carnal desires.

However, Clements said that "the play represents a plethora of metaphors for how we relate to the desires that seem so typical of human beings."

"Paradise Hotel" makes the average Saturday night "an experience in theatre that is absolutely unique," he said.

On a lighter note, Forest Theatre of Pure Form asks that when attending one of its performances of "Paradise Hotel," audience members wear some representation of feathers.

"We like to celebrate the present moment that theater is all about and try to make it fun, and the feathers also help to form that concept of 'paradise' with the feathers as representations of angels, birds, and other heaven-like things," Clements said.

Clements all but suggests that much can be left to the ways of imagination after this show.

"When you get up to leave after watching a performance of 'Paradise Hotel,' I hope that you also leave wondering, 'Is that how the mind really works?'"

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