Review: Lula Del Ray

When most people think of theatre, they think of bright multi-colored lights, decadent costumes and elaborate stages that can be wheeled off stage with ease. At the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, Lula Del Ray shattered the perceptions of what theatre should and can be.

Created by the Manual Cinema production company in Chicago, Lula Del Ray is a coming-of-age story about Lula, a teen whose vivid imagination keeps her company in the vast, rolling desert of southwestern America. She lives with her mother, who spends her time taking down readings and calculations from space, in a lone trailer in the desert. Lula also dreams of faraway planets, but her ambitions change when through her crackly radio she hears the dulcet tones of the Baden Brothers. Inspired by Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and Patsy Cline, the Baden Brothers are a pair of cowboy-hat-donning crooners with a musical riff on the “Lord, Blow the Moon Out Please.” that opens up Lula’s world. Lula is determined to meet her crushes and runs away from home to go to the big city in order to meet them.

With the exception of the Baden Brothers singing and a few radio announcements, there is no dialogue. The entire story is told through visuals with sound mixing and score rolling underneath, which comes from a live band on the side of the stage. Using the overhead projectors to project carefully colored or cut-out figures onto a screen, Lula sometimes only moves by a hand moving a piece of film back and forth. Although you can never actually see the hand moving on the projector, the production allows you to see the puppeteers working. For more complex movements, there are two actors for Lula (Sarah Fornace) and her mother (Julia Miller) whose silhouettes occupy the big screen.