Small message in an oversized 'Bottle'
"Message in a Bottle" runs through April 7 at the Knight Theater.
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on April 5, 2024. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. And check out this link for Toppman’s archive of reviews in the Ledger.
Review: Show built on refugee narratives — mixed with the music of Sting — lacks depth but delivers on some strong vocals
Sting re-recorded songs he has sung throughout the years for “Message in a Bottle,” which weaves them together with the narrative of three siblings who flee their country after a bomb blast. (Photo by Lynn Theisen, courtesy of Blumenthal Arts)
by Lawrence Toppman
Had “Message in a Bottle” run 30 minutes on a mixed program of dance, it would have been a strikingly novel entertainment. Had it lasted an hour, it would have been an uneven yet worthwhile experiment. Spread over nearly two hours with an intermission, it becomes a flaccid piece that makes its points quickly, hammers most of them home with painful literalness, and gives us a repetitively vague and disconnected view of refugees’ experiences.
The show at Knight Theater, part of the PNC Broadway Lights Series from the Blumenthal, uses songs by Sting to profile the misadventures of three nameless Middle Eastern siblings who flee their nameless homeland after a bomb blast. It may be impossible not to think of Palestinians leaving Gaza after Israeli reprisals for Hamas’s attack, but the show was conceived long ago.
Director-choreographer Kate Prince and musical arranger Alex Lacamoire (who did wonders with “Hamilton”) begin with joy. The siblings and their parents share a happy, hip-hop-filled encounter, and the elder brother gets married. Then comes the bomb, followed by incidents of torture, mocking by heartless authorities, surveillance, rage in a barbed-wire enclosure, then sudden and improbable happiness for all concerned.
If you claim to show the range of refugee experiences, shouldn’t somebody not escape suffering and exploitation? When the wife disappears from a raft during a frightening storm at sea, shouldn’t she die? “Bottle” lacks the courage of its convictions; it uses refugees’ misery to wring generic compassion from us — generic because you can’t give real compassion to mere symbols — while softening the blows.
The creators cleverly reinterpreted certain songs. “Every Breath You Take,” always the creepy anthem of a stalker, plays out with menacing figures spying on a woman. “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” refers not to a morally shaky teacher and a schoolgirl but an inquisitor who’s likely to commit rape.
Most of the time, though, you can forecast moods from song titles. “Shadows in the Rain” does indeed take place amid lighting that casts … shadows in the rain. “The Bed’s Too Big Without You” requires the presumed widower to climb into a bed too big for him and thrash around. At the first notes of “Roxanne,” you know someone will put on a red light (seven, in fact), and a drug-addled hooker — in this case, the long-lost wife of the older brother — will flaunt her wares.
Prince quickly runs through her dance vocabulary of clenching and releasing, locking and unlocking, breakdancing, punching the air and snapping back the raised arms. Her dancers move in lockstep with the amped-up rhythms of the songs, beautifully and monotonously matching the music.
She does retain the capacity to surprise: A lyrical second-act duet for the husband and wife, done to the haunting “Fields of Gold,” has warmth and tenderness. But he’d shoved her away a moment before, repulsed by her behavior as a prostitute. What suddenly changed? A coherent narrative would tell us.
For Sting fans, the music may be the best part of the show. He re-recorded all the numbers with a different band, including Lacamoire on piano and other instruments, and he sings with incisive energy. Five women, notably Beverley Knight on “Fields of Gold,” have strong vocal solos. When you get tired of watching the umpteenth breakdance, you can happily close your eyes.
If You’re Going: “Message in a Bottle” runs through April 7 at 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday in Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews about two times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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