One of the sets in The Anderson Project is a peep show apartment. Stick in a token, and get a private room of adult videos. Somehow we all need this kind of sensation, just as we need fairytale for adults, somwhere away from life, and into it.
If you still see adult video to be nothing by dirt and lust, it's either you haven't faced a mid-life crisis, or you are not a man. The Anderson Project protrays mainly two men, one a songwriter from Montreal to Paris, the other his commissioner—a theatre manager. They are brought together by an Anderson play, namely 'The Dryad'. The manager invited the writer to travel all the way to Paris, to adapt this story into a play for children.
The songwriter is a stranger to the city. His 16-year relationship just came to a stop. He is nervous about people's response on his work. This is enough chaos. Meanwhile, the manager is facing similar slumps. His wife goes out with his friend. He is nervous about dealing with the Danish—the ultimate financial source for his theatre. The two men serve as mirror images of one another, echoing the uncertainty and insecurity of life. As the story comes to an end, the songwriter is abandoned from the entire production. As he decides to go back to Montreal, his girlfriend announces she has got together with his friend. Sarcastically, the manager's wife at the same time ran away with the manager's best friend too.
I couldn't help relating the story with the film The Lost Translation, especially for that of the songwriter. A man out of place both physically and in life, except the songwriter doesn't meet a beautiful and sexy girl in Paris. I guess we all need to be immersed in a totally different world for new self-realization. And that is more or less analogous to being in a theatre. The closing quote was “Is life like Anderson's fairy tale, where endings are always full of sarcasm, only animals can live happily ever after?” This touches and catches everyone of us.
The show is fascinating not only by its plot. Director, Robert Lepage, is well known for his multimedia theatre elements. With Ex Machina, the visual effect this time is a stunning 3D screen—audience not only see projected images, but also digital images that merge with the shadow and even the subject of the actor, as he jumps INTO the screen or draws graffitti on it. Every scene is run on a 'one man show' mode, adding to the loneliness of each character. Every time we only hear one man's voice, or maybe some from the adult videos.
The adult videos are a refugee for lost adults. But it is also solitude and loneliess at the same time. The songwriter says, he never likes childhood, it is just a dress rehearsal of everything bad that will happen afterwards. Perhaps Anderson's stories aim to serve this function, tell us how bad the world is going to be. And when we are here at the middle of our life, we choose either to escape to the adult videos, or face it in art like The Anderson Project.
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