ROME -- Arriving at a rather bare hall filled with plastic chairs and a stage strewn with props at the John Cabot University, it feels as if you have accidently intruded on the site of a rehearsal instead of the evening of the performance of The English Theatre of Rome's 'In the Presence of Monsters.' The main limp prop on the stage that catches your eye is a large fragile-looking model of a ‘monster statue,’ a sort of homemade surreal Frankenstein puppet pieced together out of old white curtains, a wooden stick and a seemingly papier-mâché painted-on face. A welcome speech then promptly announces that this is very much “work-in-progress.”

 However, as the lights then dim, the informal and very self-consciously theatrical setting that almost lets the audience in on its very process of creation, takes on a different dimension. The play begins to take action slowly as the monster puppet is taken by one of the actresses and is made gradually to appear to come alive. The very opening presents the audience with a scene of this ‘statue’ emitting soft regular breathing noises: their fragmented creations (the monster model as well as the play itself) simultaneously come to life in a cleverly subtle meta-theatrical manner.

 The audience is made to wait expectantly until a rhythmic beat is superimposed to the breathing and the three actresses uniformly dressed in black appear on stage together looking lost, intertwining themselves with the monster model, themselves becoming part of the ‘representation,’ and assuming puppet-like roles reminiscent of mimes with exaggerated expressions on their faces. They become a living sculpture, intermingling themselves with other surreal props such as a pink umbrella and a single black balloon. This balloon is then popped loudly, and out falls a shower of glitter and a message rolled up in pink paper, which when curiously unfolded by the girls reads the title of the play: ‘In the Presence of Monsters.’ The girls beam comically at the audience almost in jokey acknowledgement of its spectators.

 The theatrical piece enacts a bilingual ‘tour’ for the audience in English and Italian of the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo, an eerily evocative location in northern Lazio filled with stone statues amidst a wood, that inspired Claribel Gross, Sarah Scholl, & Molly Zimmelman (all recently graduated in Theatre from the Sarah Lawrence College in New York) to create the play just three weeks ago when freshly arrived in Italy. The whole work was created in two and a half weeks.

 When the ‘tour-guides’/actresses draw the audience’s attention explicitly to the monster puppet, they refer to its “two symmetrical scales of a serpent,” alluding to some sort of “symbolist” representation of femininity, they say. This again cleverly draws attention to the original ‘homemade,’ surreal and symbolist aspect of the set-up, alluding to the audience’s own powers of imagination and suspension of disbelief involved when watching a play. We are watching them contemplate the ‘sculpture’ (a work of art like the play itself), which is in reality simply a model of a sculpture, setting in motion many meta levels of representation within its paradoxically very simple presentation. This is all done under a layer of engaging, self-referential humour, however.

 The piece integrates music, movement, puppetry, and visual art, significantly mentioning the Dadaist painter Salvador Dalí’s visit to the wood some time ago and creating a unique interesting scene out of this involving shadow puppets projected against a newspaper. It is a work that seems to take inspiration from the very surreal elements of this Spanish painter’s oeuvre.

 The whole ensemble was innovative and original, and although over in just half an hour, it felt slightly chaotic, ‘homemade’ and sporadic, with no traditional sense of plot that held it together; however, this was clearly the point -- it was itself a Frankenstein-like construction. Just as the actresses found themselves in the presence of monsters in Bormarzo, the audience too is made to find themselves in the presence of a sort of fascinating monster-creation, the 'artwork' that is the play itself.

 nkd