My overall impression
PILLAR OF FIRE (Platinum Medal)
Ray Bradbury’s Pillar of Fire was originally published in 1966, as part of “S is for Space” a collection of short Sci-Fi stories aimed at young adults, which was always one of the most page worn volumes in any junior High School library. In 1975, Bradbury, the constant creative tinkerer, adapted it for the stage.
It is unlike anything else that Bradbury ever wrote, yet, paradoxically, it is a conflux of elements that would always be inherent to his style; the fusion of the rational with the irrational, the lover of literature, the modernist secure in science, the superstitious primitive, cowering at the bumps heard in the night, the poet and the brute. What is perhaps so jarring about “Pillar of Fire” is the lack of amalgamation the parts display. Bradbury had yet to harmonize the distinct voices he bore within himself, so here they each perform in severance, with a purity of pitch later be muted in the cohesion of Bradbury’s creative choir.
Unlike Bradbury’s later works, “Pillar of Fire” is more poem than prose, more rage than reflection, and more horror story than speculative fiction.
It is 2349; the future is logical and disinfected. Man is germ-free, fear free, sanitized of superstition, of fear. Humanity has been “cleared”. Even death has been sanitized from the psyche of mankind, with only one graveyard still remaining in existence, as a tourist attraction.
But now the directive has come, it is time for it to be expunged, and the bodies interned removed and conveyed to one of the huge incinerators that towers over the landscape.
But before the removal can be completed a corpse awakens. One William Lantry, dead for 400 years.
Bradbury doesn’t bother with explanations for this occurrence.
What is important to Bradbury is a reckoning of what would be lost if “death” dies.
If the great fear of life’s end was taken from our awareness, would there be any terror left for man.
If terror was lost to man, would Poe be lost as well? Lovecraft?
If we thought there was nothing in the darkness, would we have ever crowded around a small flame seeking security among others? Would we have told stories to pass the time, and take our minds from what may be lurking in the night’s blackness?
If we thought that blackness empty, would imagination die?
Bill Oberst Jr. has chosen his role well.
His lean hard body and gaunt face has a cadaverous quality.
There is nothing on stage other than a thin patch of dirt, and Mark McClain Wilson’s superbly chiseled sound design that supports Oberst’s efforts to excellent effect.
Oberst does more than become the role he’s playing, for as the resurrected corpse discovers the world anew, Oberst creates it, becoming the reality of Bradbury’s dystopia for his audience.
Oberst does not perform the role of Lantry, he exists in it.
I cannot believe “Pillar of Fire” will not be extended passed the closing of the Fringe, allowing others to experience Oberst’s truly remarkable work, and one of the very best, if not the best solo show the Fringe had to offer.
I SAW 57 SHOWS THIS YEAR AND REVIEWED 43 OF THEM. TO READ ALL MY REVIEWS, AS WELL TO SEE MY PICKS FOR THE BEST OF THE FRINGE, GO TO “THE TVOLUTION.COM” THANK YOU ALL FOR SOME AMAZING SHOWS!
ERNEST
