Revu Revelation
“Revelation” Poster
Very fun, very sharp, very well executed: Revelation
Biblical stories, especially those about the apocalypse and by association The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, have proven to be fertile grounds for many adaptations and spin offs. It can be quite tiring. But the Los Angeles Theatre Initiative have found a way to bring something remarkably into something so bleak and sometimes stale.
Mama Ruby’s Restaurant is the setting of Revelation. A small town diner with just the right level of Americana. It’s the annual apocalypse conference and the horsemen are convinced this will be the year.
The production has a large cast but balances them exceedingly well. The stillness of its setting, Mama Ruby’s certainly helps this. Each plotline is sequestered to a table, mainly segued by the eponymous Mama Ruby herself, a cheery warm waitress.
There is a veteran of the Vietnam War. A family. A girl and her aunt, and of course the horsemen. Here, they have been reimagined - very well. Firstly, despite their age, they are all petulant. Despite their physical power they are all emotionally very weak and consistently bicker with one another. War is perhaps the most traditional of the horsemen, dressed in military garb, but there is a sense that they more so play soldier than actually fight. Famine is reimagined as a beauty influencer, creating and causing trends to get the impossible figure and lifestyle. Pestilence is reimagined as “Pest” and he is just that, an annoyance and sleaze consistently getting under the others' nerves. Throughout the production, they actively manipulate the other residents of the diner to act as microcosms of what they can do to the world, to mixed success.
Perhaps one of the best ideas in Revelation is the absence of death for the majority of its runtime. Instead death is replaced with “the fifth horseman,” the new kid on the block, formerly going by Climate, Collapse or Crisis but now by Ruin. They are the child of the group and are determined to prove their worth. It is both inventive for this kind of story about the horseman and an excellent metaphor for the severity of climate change. It is also paired with one of the best performances in the whole production, Rowelle Barfield, who brings a charisma to a role that could easily have felt annoying and instead is very endearing.
The writing is witty, the production sharp and the concept very well executed. Revelation is an old idea reinvented for the modern world and one done very well.
Tickets can be found here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/revelation
4/5 Stars
By Ethan H.M.M
