There’s a feeling of immersion the minute you walk into “Dark Wood”. The men portray apes and are already on stage, completely nude and in full character. Nudity brings in the audience, but an intriguing script is what keeps you in your seat. The audience seemed quite intrigued.
You see three very different personalities in these apes: Mbwane (Tyalor Pappas) the older and wiser ape. Strong Arm (Jonathan Slusser), the aggressive and more antisocial of the group. Finally, Rico (Cody Dermon) the fun loving worry free ape, who’s love of candy keeps him continuously interacting with the humans.
As the audience, you will feel like you’re observing a world, a conversation that we shouldn’t be seeing. What seems to be like a social experiment by the zookeepers, these three male apes are brought together to a smaller cage and kept separate from the rest.
Two of the apes were born and raised in captivity and the only world they know is just what they’ve seen. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Mbwane, who tells you how he was stolen from the forest and experimented on prior to being brought to the zoo. Exposed to the “you haven’t really lived life realization” the two younger apes start to question everything they know. Who they are, How did they come to be, And what is freedom? Challenging the idea: is it more powerful to have knowledge or is ignorance really bliss?
A social commentary of the world today and as we live it, this show exposes a lot of realizations through the lives of these apes. The show was directed by Winnie Wenglewick who also has a brief cameo as the only human in the start of show as the Feeder.
“Dark Wood” is playing at the Brown Venue at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre.
