By Barry Blake
Let's get the obsessions straight. H.G. Wells wrote his first novel The Time Machine (1895), about a man obsessed with time travel who journeys forward in time about 800,000 years. That's a lot of millenniums. Wells was a prolific, obsessed writer, the preeminent science fiction author of his time. An edition of his complete works numbers 28 volumes. His novels of blended in a political and philosophical ideas meant to rumple the Victorian notions of his time.
For the last two years James Floss has been obsessed with the idea of adapting Well's The Time Machine to the stage. Obsession has its price, that we all know. So the air hung thick with wishes and hopes as an audience of friends, well-wishers and benefactors gathered the other night with a gala opening of Floss' The Traveller, adapted, directed and performed by Floss at the Plays-in-Progress in Eureka.
Although The Traveller might be a "one-man show," this slim playbill overflows with thanks to all of those who made the performance possible.
Raising money for the production via grant-funding did not pan out, Floss notes in the acknowledge men's section. It appears once again that the persistence of an obsession is uncannily strengthened when matched by forces opposing the attainment of a goal. In other words if you can't immediately find the damned car keys, you intensify the search so much that you can't do anything else until you do find them. One senses that the rebuke by grant-givers redoubled pluses of determination to succeed.
Floss' adaptation is grand storytelling, that most ancient of dramatic forms, enhanced by theatrical conventions of setting, lighting, music and Beth Lanzi's costuming, all seamlessly accomplished. Every aspect has been meticulously crafted. Especially noteworthy is the music designed of Jon Turney and David Cash. A preshow menage of thematically linked music transit us back through history, and in a stunning display of timing, incidental music weaves supportively through in the narrative.
If you know The Time Machine , you know the story. A man who regularly meets with friends (Filby, a doctor, and Mr. Mayor) in the living room of his home in Richmond, England, in the late 1800s.
Ronn Campbell's detailed set features lovely artifacts and furniture of the period that informs us of the man and his time, a comfy digs of an engineering enthusiast who "has a fondness for mechanism".
On in this evening he tries to convince them that he has successfully completed an invention that will carry him forward or back in time. He "could verify in the accounts of the Battle of Hastings..." Or in the future he "might discover a utopian society erected on a strictly communistic basis."
He reveals the last two parts of the machine one of which is a wondrously luminous rod that looks Christmas related, like a ornate Victorian version of the light saber from Star Wars. But his friends are still incredulous. So in a pique of impatience he leaves the room to give it to go.
Those who saw the Rod Taylor movie version of the novel will remember Taylor climbing into a machine that most nearly resembles Santa's sleigh without Rudolph. We are spared that curiosity.
Credible, wonderful lighting and sound produce an extravagant off-stage rumble. It could be a time machine in 1895 leading for the future!
Four minutes later the traveller crawls back on stage torn and tattered, confused and wild. He has spent eight days in the year 802,701. He promises his astonished friends (we, the audience) that he will fill in every detail after he devours some meat. He is ravenous but anxious to give us that close account.
In 802,701 there are two kinds of people: the Eloi, Upper-Worlders, and the Morlocks, the Under-Grounders. And there is Weena, an Eloi girl/creature and ultimately the traveller's romantic interest.
An odd theoretical detachment colors his comparisons and contrasts of the life in the future with circumstances in turn-of-the-century England. He admits that "he learned very little during (my) time in this real future," and that "save for general impressions he fears he can convey very little."
For Wells to succeed in the early sci-fi genre, he required a reliable narrator, a careful reporter of good sense, analytical, and in all ways temperate. The traveller is a man more of brain than heart. Remember, were he to go back in time he would choose to look more closely at the details of the Battle of Hastings! I'd go for an interview with Cleopatra myself. His character is purposely flattened so he can be a spokesperson for Wellian ideas.
For this adaptation to be extraordinary theatre it needs emotional conflict in personal relationships, a little more heart than brain. Floss wants to bring dimension to the traveller, but he is stuck with Well's words. Best moments come after the traveller confesses, "I had even resolved to bring Weena back with me."
Suddenly the traveller is real! The audience reacts to the new tension. His flareups with Mayor and uncovering his reckless, inept preparation for the expedition--he left behind medicine, a weapon, ample matches, his Kodak, food--also engaged the audience. Before that, and until the adventure of rescue and escape takes hold, which is well into the second act, we drift along on philosophical observations of food, Darwinian social arrangements and occasionally amusing Victorian visions of life almost a million years from now when rhododendrons still bloom in the early spring!
At curtain the audience stood as one to applaud and demand an encore from James Floss. I was lauding the exceptional telling of the story. I was cheering a project exceedingly well crafted by a fine actor who persisted in his vision. But we, I think, were not applauding the story, which adapted without radical revision almost betrays this praiseworthy production, one that deserves the long and loud applause.