Director does expert job with tough ‘Insect’

Josef and Karel Capek’s 1922 “The Insect Play” has been labeled anti-war and anti-human, but it may actually be anti-nature. You get the feeling that war is as strong an instinct as sex and selfishness. But that doesn’t mean this play isn’t fun. Director Brandon McClenahan focuses on the script’s humor in Insurgo’s production, and the result is a cartoonish comedy, great to look at, rich in thought.

An old World War I solider, a tramp (Samuel Francis Craner III), falls asleep in the woods and imagines, in three visions, the daily lives of butterflies (who seem to have little on their mind but mating), beetles (interested in nothing but their self-interest) and ants (admirable, at first, for their devotion to the group cause, rather than themselves).

The tramp isn’t happy about man’s inhumanity to man and wonders if other forms of life might not have some moral lesson to teach us. Our poor hero has a lot to learn about the viciousness of life cycles, and by the end, the beauty of butterflies, beetles, ants and man have been lost to him. But there’s a small gesture in the final moment that suggests a glimmer of hope. It’s in sweet contrast to all the frenetic action that precedes it.

Obviously, this is a tough script, visually, but McClenahan does an expert job of suggesting more with less. His and Tim Burris’ simple set suggests the inner workings of the woods as seen through the eyes of a drunkard. John Beane’s costumes are amusingly inventive and ring with color. Shawn Hackler’s sometimes brutal lighting goes a long way in suggesting mood and place. Greg Gerriet contributes a myriad of sound effects that throw us into the environment.

This is a director’s play, but interesting performances abound. Sandy Stein is a hilarious worry-wart Mrs. Beetle; Katrina Larsen, a seductive and batty butterfly; Sarah Spraker, a movingly blissful, very pregnant cricket.

McClenahan has some major trouble in the first section in that he makes the butterflies too adorable. You don’t get the feeling of run-amok lust or any sense of genuine communication. Things pick up considerably, though, after that, and by time the ants are marching off to war (to maintain peace of course), the production scores one bull’s-eye after the other.

It’s to McClenahan’s great credit that he doesn’t serve the material with a heavy hand.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.