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Friday, March 29, 2024
The Eagle
Where: Synetic Theater
When: feb. 9- Mar. 3
Tickets: $45 - $55

Theater review: Genesis Reboot

The Tree of Life is made of metal pipes. The apple is a lightbulb. And Abel kills Cain.

Welcome to the New Old Testament.

The Synetic Theater opens its New Movements project with “Genesis Reboot,” the story of a demon (delightfully played by Joseph Carlson) and an angel (Mary Werntz) as they battle to recreate the creation story in a post-apocalyptic world.

But don’t worry: there’s still an Adam (Austin Johnson) and Eve (Brynn Tucker), a Cain (Matthew Ward) and Abel (Jefferson Farber), an apple, a snake and even a mechanized Tree of Life, which dominates most of the stage.

The show draws from, and remains true to, its source material: the Bible.

Eve very conspicuously bursts from Adam’s rib; the demon is clearly an allusion to Lucifer, the fallen angel; and the core of the relationships between Adam and Eve and between Cain and Abel are exactly as they appeared in the original text. Adam and Eve are as innocent as can be before they eat the apple, and Cain can’t stand his brother Abel.

But the play is called a “reboot” for a reason.

Director Ben Cunis, a veteran Synetic company member, with his brother Peter take the creation story to the next level, delving into deep philosophical questions about the eternal debate upon the question of perfection.

Seeing the damage done by human knowledge, who wouldn’t have second thoughts about that apple?

Scenes between Cain and Abel turned out to be the show’s fall from grace and concurrently its salvation. The Cunis brothers created an absurdist relationship between the first brothers of lore that would make Samuel Beckett proud. Farber and Ward do marvelously in creating real theater that provokes and engages the audience.

But its place in the greater structure of the piece is tenuous at best. Most of its themes of love, jealousy, faith and reconciliation barely correlate to the main action of the show that focuses so heavily on a macrocosmic question: whether humanity should be perfect or human.

That’s the benefit of new plays: They can be reworked and reformed. Synetic has a work of art and a potential classic on their hands, but it would behoove them to take advantage of the play’s infancy to tweak the few holes in the plot.

Synetic’s true talents shine, as always, in their choreography and physical theater.

The ensemble cast of six actors took on a number of forms each throughout the performance. Actors would be the animals through the first six days of creation and then become a whirlwind, sweeping up other actors to the point it appeared they were flying.

Choreographer Irina Tsikurishvili’s genius and Colin Jones’ wonderfully simple costumes, which appeared to be made of only rags and dust, aid in the image of this ensemble cast that sweeps the audience off its feet with their sheer acting prowess.

It is in this corporeal manipulation that Synetic thrives, and Synetic’s traditional, silent storytelling is supplemented by complex themes that do need some text. After all, only so much can be said in the movement of silent theater Synetic has honed.

One can only hope that Synetic does not lose their focus on the physical in the pursuit of performing more and more text-based material.

The company has found a real niche in D.C. and would be loath to let it drift away.

zcohen@theeagleonline.com


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