“What Light Through Yonder Airlock Breaks?”

Saturday night Nan and I accompanied Joe and Marie (Nan’s brother and his wife) to see a performance of New Line Theater’s Return to the Forbidden Planet, a version of the 1950s SF classic movie Forbidden Planet, itself based on/inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Like the Worm Ouroboros, the snake swallowing its own tail, Return to the Forbidden Planet loops back to the original source.

It’s not every day you get to hear the term “klystron generator” embedded in Iambic Pentameter.  New Line Theater’s Return to the Forbidden Planet is a glorious hodgepodge of Shakespearian bombast and kitschy 1950s references; Miranda’s/Altaira’s Poodle Skirt has a rocket instead of a poodle and Ariel/Robbie the Robot zips around the set on carhop roller skates.  There were even a few Star Trek phaser shout-outs thrown in for people under fifty, though everybody knows the crew of the C-57D was armed with neutron beam blasters.

Seeing (actually, hearing) Forbidden Planet is a vividly remembered event from my youth.  I saw it in on TV in the late ‘50s, not knowing what it was called, and it scared the bejabbers out of me.  I fled to the top of the stairs and listened to the sounds of the “Monster from the Id,” afraid to look, but too fascinated to turn off the TV.  It wasn’t until years later, while looking through a coffee table book on Science Fiction films, that I learned what had frightened me so as a child.  When I watched it for the first time as an adult, it was a cathartic experience.

The entire cast was good, but Zachary Allen Farmer, playing Prospero/Morbius really stood out. He was channeling Walter Pidgeon, and I mean that in a good way.  We’ve enjoyed him (Farmer) before as Barry in High Fidelity, and Barry is about as far as you can get from Prosporo/Morbius.

The music, classic ‘50s and ‘60s rock standards, tied the whole thing together beautifully.  The only negatives were the occasional Shakespearian soliloquies that stopped the tempo of the show like a circular saw hitting a knot.  Shakespeare was used to best effect when the cast mined every bad pun they could out of his work: “Two Beeps or Not Two Beeps, that is the Question!” “Beware the Ids that march!”  But I wasn’t crazy about the soliloquies.  Having them intrude on the rock-and-roll/SF fun was like finding a peppercorn in your ice cream.  They’re both edible, but they don’t belong together.

- Poppa