If you’ve never seen a lamprey onstage, San Francisco’s treasured Word for Word offers that rare opportunity in the final moments of its latest, two-part production, “Absolutely Science Fiction!” In a bit of a departure from the company’s usual choice of material—acclaimed literary works, past and present, theatricalized in their entirety without a single word altered or deleted—this summer show goes all sci-fi.
In a little over an hour, it comprises two short stories: first, Ray Bradbury’s solemn, menacing “The Veldt,” followed by the mischievous, irrepressible Kurt Vonnegut with “The Big Space F—.”
Both stories—Bradbury’s written in 1950, Vonnegut’s in 1970, according to program notes—imagine a world of a degraded future.
In “The Veldt,” a couple with two children (whimsically named Peter and Wendy) live in a house that does everything for them. Want ketchup with dinner, which the house itself has just prepared? Ask, and a ketchup bottle pops up. Probably conceivable only by such imaginative folks as Bradbury back when he wrote it, the concept may feel today only a few steps more invasively helpful than Alexa.
Part of the house is set aside for the nursery, in which the children (played by Christian Jimenez and Hannah Mae Sturges as the entitled kids from hell) can somehow create scenes of their choice.
Their preference: an African veldt, all hot and dry, with bloodthirsty lions roaring in the distance—lions that the family actually can hear and see tearing apart their prey. Designer Kate Boyd suggests the various scenes, accompanied by minimal but evocative wall projections by Ray Oppenheimer and Cliff Caruthers’ chilling sound design.
Unsettled, the struggling-to-take-control parents (Ryan Tasker and Nicole Odell) attempt to close off the nursery, but, what with the house itself fulfilling all the kids’ needs, and indeed empowering them, a chilling conclusion is inevitable.
Bradbury ups the ante throughout, but stylistically his narration and dialogue tend to sound stilted, old-fashioned, a bit repetitive. However, the actors, including longtime Word performer Joel Mullennix in several incidental roles, have lots of creepy fun with it.
If Bradbury’s story envisions artificial intelligence on steroids, Vonnegut’s futuristic spoof focuses on the environment, presenting a planet out of control: overpopulated, overwhelmed with its own garbage; Lake Erie is solid sewage! The very short story begins with projected images of junkyards and devastation, set to a buoyant recorded rendition of “America the Beautiful.” We’re in Vonnegut’s playful, satirical world now.
Society’s solution: Reseed the population by sending “jizzum” to the Andromeda Galaxy, thus laying the groundwork for populating a whole new, clean world there. (No mention of eggs, however.) In a sort of wacky side story, a middle-class couple (Sturges and Jimenez) is told that their daughter (Odell, hilarious in multiple roles) is suing them for ruining her childhood—which leads (don’t ask how) to the lamprey connection. Lampreys, known as “vampire fish,” have for centuries been sucking the water out of Lake Erie.
Vonnegut is all over the map with this one, and it’s lots of fun.
Artfully directed (by longtime Word member Delia MacDougall) and performed by a cast that knows exactly how to collaborate as a smooth ensemble, Word’s venture into sci-fi casts its usual spell. Whether or not sci-fi is your thing, that literary magic, in this intimate space, presides.
Word For Word and Z Space’s “Absolutely Science Fiction!” continues through July 19 at Z Below, 470 Florida St., San Francisco. Tickets are $50 to $75 at Zspace.org/wfwscifi.