"Ganesh Versus the Third Reich," which was performed at the Hop on Friday and Saturday, however, is not only stimulating, but also remarkable and impressive in its ability to upend the conventional standard of watching a play.
If your standard theater performance is roughly the equivalent of a gin and tonic delicious and enjoyable yet rather ordinary "Ganesh" is a complicated, expertly crafted cocktail, perhaps containing two types of alcohol whose names you do not know, a dash of absinthe and a sprig of something that you will certainly be wondering about in the morning.
"Ganesh" was created by Back to Back Theatre, a 25-year-old Australian company Back to Back Theatre and is directed by Bruce Galdwin. The show was created over a five-year period with heavy amounts of improvisation and research by the company's actors.
The press poster alone suggests the inventiveness and possibly downright inappropriateness of the play, as it depicts a suited man wearing an elephant head presumably Ganesh, the Hindu deity standing alongside a swastika-adorned Adolf Hitler.
Despite the show's perhaps unlikely story, it is far from a statement of political incorrectness. "Ganesh" focuses on Ganesh's journey to recover the swastika, an ancient symbol of well-being, from Hitler's Nazi Party and Ganesh's father promises to destroy all of mankind if he fails.
There is an added dimension, however, as the show is also about the very process of putting on this particular play. There are plenty of speed bumps along the way, and several high-spirited, realistic arguments commandeered by the "show's" director, played by the tan-and-toned actor Luke Ryan.
In addition to his duties as director and role as Hindu God Vishnu, Ryan also plays Dr. Mengele and a German pantyhose seller. Though there are subtitles, the moments when Ryan speaks in German are alarmingly chilling.
If there had been any hope of sitting idly in my seat and being a passive sponge, absorbing a unique tale of adventure and recovery, it was immediately squashed in the first minutes when the bare-bones stage reveals the play-within-a play nature, and your existence in relation to it is dubious at best.
Scott Price, the show's Debbie Downer who is always disgruntled about the company's operations, begins by asking, "Can I be in the play?"
Simon Laherty, who has multiple roles throughout the duration of the show, explains that "it's a story about power."
"That sounds like a really good play," Price says, deadpan. "It sounds really powerful."
And so immediately the world of "Ganesh" has the audience pondering and attempting to examine the play as well as the age-old, open-ended question of why art or performance might matter in the first place. And it is this question that repeatedly knocks you in the head.
At one point, Ryan's character breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience: "You have come to see a freak show, haven't you?" He later addresses viewers as perverts and states that "people have problems with blurring lines between fiction and reality."
So, what is real and what is fake in "Ganesh"? Seemingly, it is up to the viewer to decide. Ryan's character, the director, becomes such a shape-shifting entity, at first managing his actors with compassion and ingenuity and then wielding the authoritative role of the almighty director, complete with an evil laugh.
Again, perhaps just to ensure that unpacking this play is endless, the power dynamic does not remain static; the show's other actors yell, shout and taunt each other so convincingly that you wonder if a stage manager is going to run out and tell everyone to take five.
It is important to note that four of the five cast members are individuals that the play's bill describes as "intellectually disabled," though this characterization hardly disables in their performances. Rather, it is their manipulation of their precise personalities that contribute to making this show great.
"Ganesh" is at times both astoundingly complex and beautifully simple. Most impressive is the actors' ability to continuously transform the stage into a new, inventive landscape capable of conveying the harshness of the times of the Fuhrer or the struggle in putting on a good show. This is often achieved with nothing more than a series of plastic curtains and innovative lighting; the most magical scene is without question the way in which they construct a train ride to Berlin.
There is not one single way of interpreting "Ganesh": the play so profoundly tackles and continuously upends what it means to be powerful, how we define obstacles and the process of overcoming them that "Ganesh" is in fact an endless loop demonstrating theater as a infinite, tangible adventure within the realm of uncertainty. Bartender, another round.
