STAGE REVIEW : A NO-ANSWER RIDDLE AT JAPAN AMERICA THEATER

Squat Theater: sounds ugly. But this New York group (originally from Hungary) gave a beautifully accomplished demonstration of theater magic Thursday night at the Japan America Theater. The piece, “Dreamland Moves,” was a riddle that didn’t demand an answer.

The first part was a movie, in good old black and white. One was reminded of last year’s “Stranger Than Paradise,” not merely because it starred the same young woman, Eszter Balint. There was the same off-the-wall feeling as the heroine proceeded through a number of non-sequitur adventures, starting with unpacking in a new apartment.

After a while the movie screen went dark and went up, like a window shade. The stage floor became a field of flames, rather placid flames, suggesting church candles. Now we were watching a play with Balint and some of the male actors from the movie, live.

At least we thought they were live. Then--like a candle--the face of one of the actors went out . One saw that he was in fact a blank-faced mannequin, his features limned by a hidden movie projector.

It’s startling to see a person suddenly become a prop, and it happened more than once. (Not to Balint; she was really there.) Is that what “Dreamland Burns” meant to say: that most people are walking, talking dummies? Perhaps, but the piece didn’t seem particularly anxious to say anything at all, merely to present a dreamscape that the audience could walk around in, in imagination.

This was not to be confused with a vaporous “dream sequence.” As in real dreams, everything in the piece--written and directed by Balint’s father, Stephan--was sharp and immediate. Some of it was as real as an overheard conversation on the bus, as when Miss Balint was giggling about men with Jennifer Stein (she was really there too).

But strange things kept happening, in a leisurely and somehow inevitable way--another characteristic of dreams. The deluge of junk shop debris from the ceiling was especially spectacular--old chairs and such.

Miss Balint now and again affected surprise at the odd things that were happening, but in no way seemed disturbed by them. Having stepped through the looking glass, she was prepared for anything, including murder. But can a mannequin, though stabbed in the back, truly be said to be murdered? The effect here was that of opening a frozen turkey and removing the giblets (in this case, jewels.)

Mirroring the earlier movie, Miss Balint also grabbed a Yellow Cab, which turned out to be a vaudeville flat. The background of this scene was painted theatrical curtains, a hint that the riddle behind the dream related to stage-truth versus screen-truth. Perhaps, as well, stage-truth versus real truth. Who were those people walking around behind the curtains?

But it wasn’t an intellectualizing, find-the-symbol kind of evening. The audience was quite content to bask in the images and to admire Squat Theater’s mastery of theatrical prestidigitation. This was the last show in the “Explorations” series at the Japan America Theater, and it expressed a sister truth to Archibald MacLeish’s observation about poetry: Theater doesn’t have to mean. It can simply be.