Theatre in Review: Fondly, Collette Richland (Elevator Repair Service/New York Theatre Workshop)Not too far into the first act of Fondly, Collette Richland, the actor Greig Sargeant looks out at the audience and exclaims, "I can't understand a single thing that is happening!" "You and me both," snarled a male voice in the audience at the performance I attended. I gasped: Was someone really talking back to the stage? Were we facing a subscriber rebellion? What would Patti LuPone do? It took only seconds to realize that the line had been delivered by a cast member, planted in the audience. The rest of the cast assembled on stage, glaring, while a couple of members of the company escorted him from the auditorium. "I won't be renewing my subscription," he grumbled. A cute gag -- too cute, perhaps, but also oddly prophetic, for, when I returned to the theatre after intermission, somewhere between forty and fifty percent of the audience had bolted into the night. In decades of attending the theatre, I've never seen such a mass exodus; it is especially surprising coming from New York Theatre Workshop subscribers, who know that they are signing on for a season of challenging subject matter and formal experimentation. But, apparently, they are partial to productions that make some kind of sense, something Fondly, Collette Richland refuses to do. If I seem to be spinning my wheels, it's because I haven't the faintest idea of what to tell you about the madness that is currently unfolding on NYTW's stage. We begin in the home of Mabrel and Colonel "Fritz" Fitzhubert, who are sitting down to dinner. "Eat to live; don't live to eat," says Mabrel, not for the last time. They stare in fascination at the can opener. "It makes me think a bit of the solar system," says Fritz. In the middle of all this cosmic wonder, they are joined by Local Representative Wheatsun. "Please keep in mind that we wish to have no dramatic action this evening," adds Mabrel -- and, even at this early point, I wanted to say, Sister you sure got your wish. As dinner progresses -- the actress who plays the cat crawls downstage and coughs up an enormous hairball -- Mabrel, by way of making conversation, notes, "We also have a secret passageway in our house." She opens it up for Wheatsun and through it -- or not -- everyone ends up in an Alpine resort populated by ex-royalty (The Deposed and Dethroned Grand Queen Empress Queen Patrice), sinister Continental types, a male blonde bombshell named Sailor Boy, the Face of the Ghost of Jesus Christ, a pair of fast-talking society dames on the loose form a '40s screwball comedy, and a horned devil known as The Krampus. Somebody carries on, in a net, an enormous stuffed pig, then scatters little baby pigs around the stage. Eventually a set of cardboard mountains is revealed and everyone goes in search of Fritz, who has disappeared. There is talk of pagan religions, political rebellion, rising and falling civilizations, and God only knows what else, but in Sibyl Kempson's text, the dialogue is too scattered, too cryptic, and sometimes just too hard to make out, given the extensive use of overlapping dialogue. There is plenty of yodeling. The actor Mike Iveson, who provides piano accompaniment and occasional narration, appears first as a priest in a cassock and later as a bellboy, wearing only the top half of his uniform. The cat crawls into a cardboard box and affixes a postal sticker to it. There are weird allusions: to, among other things, Gypsy: "Here she is, boys! Here she is, world!" shouts the title character, a former radio star, who, by the way, is at best a peripheral figure in the action (if "action" is the word I want). Despite my general bewilderment, I feel certain that the cast performs their bizarre tasks with uncommon nimbleness and John Collins' direction seems assured. Even when the stage is filled with chaos, as it often is in the second act, it feels purposeful. David Zinn's set, which relies heavily on movable panels, contributes to the feeling of free-form improvisation that I imagine was intended. Jacob A. Climer's whimsical costumes, amended by some contributions from Zinn, range all over the map, but they are often nicely detailed. Mark Barton's lighting deals out an enormous variety of looks -- white washes, saturated color mixes, sinister effects -- to match the production's crazily shifting moods. Ben Williams' sound design provides a parade of effects, most notably a series of thundering crashes whenever the actors fall or run into each other; the sound is permitted to become painfully loud, but by then the entire production consists of an assault on the senses. You can't really criticize Fondly, Collette Richland for not making sense, when nobody involved ever saw that as a goal. I would note, however, that this sort of mad, abstract lark is nothing new; Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, and Arnold Weinstein (to name only three) were up to this sort of thing half a century ago. It is also best enjoyed in small doses; at over two-and-a-half hours, this one is a challenge to audience stamina the likes of which I have rarely seen. I will add that, even as I entered a state of stupefaction, the hardy band of patrons who made it to the end offered a warm ovation, even a few lusty cheers. Anyway, forewarned is forearmed. I complained when Elevator Repair Service staged a series of pieces using the texts of The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and other early 20th-century classics -- but maybe it's time for this troupe to make another visit to the library. -- David Barbour 
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