So Now Our Story Begins

"Time for the beginning of time!" intones our Yeast Greek Chorus at the opening of Yeast Nation. It's one of those lines that's funny because you can't quite decide if it makes sense or not, and the more you think about it, the less sure you get. The whole opening lyric tells us everything we need to know about the wonderful, wacky roller coaster ride ahead -- including the fact that it will be periodically disorienting.

But that line, "Time for the beginning of time" is also weirdly meaningful. After all, our story is about the beginning of... well, almost everything...

We start, of course, with the fact that Jan-the-Elder is literally the first life form on Earth. You can't get more beginning than that.

Like Urinetown, Yeast Nation is faux dramatic, or as Trump might call it, Fake Tragedy. And that's the source of much of the humor in the show, the uber-serious tone and narrative, against the inherently ridiculous premise and setting. One of the ways the show maintains that delicious faux seriousness is that it keeps offering up origin stories for us, not just the origin of Life, but also the origins of Evolution, Love, Emotion, Theatre, Ritual, Politics, and also the stoner term, "fatty."

A moment late in the show gets to the heart of all that, at the birth of a child when, as the stage direction puts it,"All ululate." That moment gets at ancient primal rituals, primal emotions, and it connects our musical yeasts to our present as well as our past. Many cultures today ululate, but as far back as Aeschylus' classical Greek drama Seven Against Thebes, a character named Eteocles tells a crowd of women how to ululate properly:

I accept this word of yours, in preference to your earlier words. Now, in addition to that, get away from the images and utter a better prayer — that the gods should fight alongside us. Listen to my prayer, and then utter the sacred, auspicious ululation of triumph, the customary Hellenic cry at sacrifices, to give confidence to our friends and dispel their fear of the foe. I say to the gods who inhabit this land, both those who dwell in the plains and those who watch over the market-place, and to the springs of Dirce and the waters of Ismenus, that if all turns out well and the city is saved, we will redden the altars of the gods with the blood of sheep, set up monuments of victory,

But this is also a story about the beginning of Emotion. In this world, Love is literally deadly. And also, these characters are terrible at dealing with Love, because they have no experience with that or any other emotion. They're like moody Tweens suffering their first puppy love, but at the same time, they're all tangled up in life-or-death political intrigue.

Watching them stumble their way through Love -- and Hate and Jealousy and Fear -- is so desperately, honestly human, and it's how Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann gets us to care about the wild, tangled events of our story. These characters have such human flaws and frailties, and the various power struggles change direction over and over, usually due to overwhelming emotions of one sort or another.

One of my favorite threads winding underneath the action is that, since love and other emotions, and political intrigue, and "the long view of history," are all new to our characters, our Yeasts are pretty bad at all those things. They plot and scheme, but so transparently that everybody can always surmise what everybody else is up to. They feel these powerful emotions, and then stumble and drool all over those feelings. Jan-the-Wise and Jan-the-Second are both beyond awkward, sometimes crossing into creepy, in their clumsy courtships of Jan-the-Sweet.

And yet, in comic counterpoint to all that -- but also in harmony with all that -- is the show's faux serious posture as early Greek tragedy, our earliest recorded theatre, the beginning of Western theatre.

As I said in another post, if you change the crazy premise of the story to something less silly, the story becomes genuine tragedy. That's how much Kotis and Hollmann understand the genres they're mixing and playing with. I've noticed that the real Greek tragedies were really talky! They're also really compelling, exciting theatre, when they're done well. I realize Yeast Nation is also talky in that same way, except Yeast Nation is a rock musical, so it's not talking; it's great rock songs.

As they did with Urinetown, co-lyricists Kotis and Hollmann are really good at writing songs that are dialogue more than just lyrics. Several of the songs in the show are serious fights, and the music does so much to take us to those extreme emotions. Last week, I told the actors to unleash the drama, and really go for it -- and it raised the show to the mythic stature it should have, despite its considerable silliness.

Again like Urinetown, when we get to the end of Yeast Nation, you won't be sure whether what you just saw was one big goof, or something deeply profound. Or both.

What could be more fun than that?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Click Here to Buy Tickets!