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Worthy
is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and
might and honor and glory and blessing!
This is
all very fine and well for the Lamb (except maybe the slaughtering part);
as for the rest of us, it amounts to a bugle-boy greeting followed by seven
seals, seven plagues, four horsemen, two beasts, and a really, really bad
time. Allegedly penned by the Apostle John while he was doing time in a
Roman penal colony, the Book of Revelation is a graphic depiction of the
end times included at the conclusion of many Christian Bibles. While it is
one of the milder contributions to the Apocrypha -- those religious
documents rejected by Jews and Protestants -- it remains an endless font
for good horror movies and bad acid trips: oozing sores; oceans of blood;
storms of fire, frogs, and ice; dragons with seven heads and 10 horns; and
whores sitting in lakes of excrement with worms eating their entrails. (OK,
that last one came from the Apocalypse of Peter, but still ....) Any way
you cut it, the end of the world is juicy stuff, ripe for stage and screen
and, in this case, one very peculiar children's mime. Apocalypse: The
Book of Revelation is a one-man show by Northern Californian
movement-theater artist Eliot Fintushel. A two-time recipient of the
U.S. National Endowment for the Arts Solo Performer Award, Fintushel is
also a theater instructor, a puppet maker, a science-fiction writer, and,
it must said, a bit of a wack job. Who else would
deliver a blow-by-blow account of the final battle of Armageddon while
standing on his head, or stage Revelation in its entirety -- nearly 12,000
words -- by himself? Gardner Dozois,
editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, has described Fintushel's writing as bizarre, biting, brilliant, and
totally gonzo. Certainly, the same must be said of his stagecraft. Using
masks, variant voices, ancient hymns, and precise physical allusions,
Fintushel conjures the final days, embodying the Whore of Babylon, poor
brother John, the Beast, the angels, the sinners, the saviors, and God
himself with schizophrenic dexterity. It's a wonder he can sleep at night. Apocalypse:
The Book of Revelation will be presented Thursdays, Fridays, and
Saturdays through June 28 at the Marsh (1062 Valencia near 22nd Street) at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12-17; call 826-5750.
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