Charlie Kaufman -- who has written the screenplays for such merrily mind-bending films as "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" -- isn't so much a trickster as a hide-and-seek artist.
His films, however odd their premise may seem at first, are never about getting lost but about being found. They are not mysteries but anti-mysteries. The pleasure they are meant to give is in their explanations. You don't get fleeting clues but fleets of clues. You leave the theater not wondering but knowing. Kaufman's the comic anti-Kafka for a Kafkaesque age.
His wit once more runs rampant in Kaufman's intriguing "Theater of the New Ear," which opened the UCLA Live season Wednesday night at Royce Hall. The show consists of two "original sound plays set to live music by Carter Burwell."
Film stars -- Hope Davis, Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan, Meryl Streep, David Thewlis -- seated on stools, casually dressed, read radio playlets from scripts. Marko Costanzo, a foley artist, creates sound effects, which is a show in its own right. Burwell conducts an excellent chamber ensemble, Parabola, on stage as well.
Kaufman did not write both plays. Except he did. When this show was first presented in New York in April, Kaufman's "Hope Leaves the Theater" was paired with a play by Ethan and Joel Coen, whose films Burwell regularly scores, as he does those written by Kaufman. But since the Coen brothers' cast wasn't available for the Royce dates, a new play, "Anomalisa," was written by Francis Fregoli for the occasion. Fregoli is "an established writer, who wishes to remain anonymous," according to the program note. Maybe I'm wrong, but however much Kaufman likes to hide, he likes even more to be found.
In "Anomalisa," Thewlis is a self-help author who arrives in Cincinnati to give a speech. He has an affair with Lisa (Leigh), whom he meets in the hotel. They have hot sex, all the while seated on opposite sides of the stage. Noonan is between them, and he is everyone from the taxi driver, to the television set, to the hotel personnel, to Lisa's roommate.
The radio play format is marvelous. Everything is revealed, yet the magic of theater is maintained. Still, Kaufman's tricksterisms can be trying. He toys with reality, but the safety net is huge. The most imaginative scene, in which the hotel staff turns into a single smothering love machine, turns out to be only a dream. But Thewlis' existential angst is real, and that is impressive.
