For those few of you reading these articles that aren’t members of my immediate family, my Bastion review may have given you the impression that I was some kind of starry-eyed optimist about things. In fact, I’m more the typical nerd in that I hate pretty much everything. Bastion was one of those rare works whose craft can overcome my cynicism and surprise me for the better, but in general, I find most things I encounter to be poorly conceived and shoddily executed. On that note: From Dust!

From Dust is the brainchild of designer Eric Chahi (famous for his 1991 release Another World/Out of This World in North America), a spiritual sequel to the original “god game” Populous. You control the mysterious force known as “the Breath”, scooping up water, earth, and lava to build bridges and remove obstacles so groups of villagers can move around various islands. Why you actually do this is anybody’s guess.

The plot is as ephemeral as your avatar, each level opening with one or two sentences that vaguely justify the ensuing gameplay challenges. There’s a lot of catchphrases and symbolism that seems to hint at an overarching story that simply isn’t there. An in-game codex contains brief selections of backstory, but nothing that explains the story properly. Not that that would improve things, as a game’s story is not something that can be appreciated only outside of playing it.

When you actually get around to playing From Dust, there’s certainly enjoyment to be had. Manipulating the environment is deeply satisfying, especially when using some of the special powers villages grant you. For example, in certain cituations you can temporarily solidify water, allowing you to part seas and rivers and hope the villagers run through the path in time. You can also move around special plants that can burn, flood, or blow up the area around them, extremely useful in certain situations.

Unfortunately, the most basic obstacles can be compounded by the stupidity of the villagers. These are the kinds of beings that can drown in a few feet of water, or throw themselves into lava, or refuse to move over what seems like easily passable terrain. Add to this the fact that you have only the most rudimentary control over them, and more often than not failing in the game seems like it’s less your fault than the game’s.

Where From Dust shines is in its presentation. Its graphics are beautiful, creating sweeping vistas of rippling water and flowing lava. And although there’s no real soundtrack, the subtle sounds of the sea and gurgling lava provide a nice accompaniment.

Watching a gigantic tsunami sweep towards a village as you hurriedly pour lava into a protective wall, you can forgive most of the game’s faults if you approach it in the right state of mind. From Dust is nothing spectacular, and probably won’t be remembered long past its release, but it’s certainly an interesting experience. Definitely download the demo first, but do give it a try.

3 / 5 Melons

Note: At the time of this writing, there is a storm of controversy surrounding the PC version of From Dust, particularly its online-dependent DRM and port quality, or lack thereof. Potential customers are advised to further research the situation before purchasing.

Politics corrupts. It is a natural process – just as expectable as a jilted woman murdering her lover or the naïve being taken in by a con. This, it seems, is one of the inevitable conclusions of All the King’s Men, currently playing at the INTIMAN Theatre.

The play is set in Jim Crow Louisiana. Written in 1947, its plot is loosely based upon the life of Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long. The play centers on the life of Jack Burden (Leo Marks), who lives his life hanging around the line between legitimacy and corruption. He begins his career as a journalist with a pushy reputation, and eventually manages to become the shadowy employee of the Democratic Governor of Louisiana, Willie Starks. He knows how to empathize with and manipulate almost everyone around him. But who he is, what he values, and why he does what he does – these things the audience is never privileged to know. Jack spends the play alternatively in a state of cynical detachment or in soul-wracking conflict with himself. But why? What are the exact forces pulling him? After watching for three hours, I still could not say that I know much about Jack Burden.

The play opens with the ensemble coming out and singing about a metaphorical/physical flood: “They’re trying to wash us away” is the refrain. Like a Greek chorus, throughout the play the ensemble will come together and sing the inner thoughts or general feelings of “the common people.” This was a common device in ancient Greek theatre, and to heighten the connection between the two eras the foreground of the stage is set with Greek columns. This implies that the events portrayed in the play are as ancient as, well, the ancients, though of course the modern theatrical form is not a copy of past form. Sometimes the chorus device works and sometimes it doesn’t. At one point the ensemble sings about how they are all rednecks who are proud of it, but the kinds of things they say are so insulting that no actual “proud redneck” would say them. The intrusion of the urban intellectual playwright’s opinion is rather obvious.

The chorus also provides an eye-rollingly obvious justification for playwright Robert Penn Warren to ignore black experiences. “See?” he says, “These characters are racist! They’re ‘keepin’ the niggers down!’ Therefore I don’t have to include black people in my play about Jim Crow Louisiana, not even as ensemble characters with no lines!” Other than that one song, an epithet-loaded exchange between some “hicks,” and a line or two about how in Baton Rouge “everyone looks like me,” the issue of race never comes up in the play. The main characters don’t give their opinions on race or interact with black people because then we as the modern liberal audience would be forced to dislike them. The playwright clearly sees racism as a side issue to whatever he wants to talk about, and director Pam MacKinnon went along with it. Perhaps it is simply that neither of them are skilled enough to address race without distracting from the play’s main themes.

We first meet politician Willie Stark (John Procaccino) as small-town player trying to prevent the local school board from selling a contract for a new schoolhouse to their relatives. He fails, and two years later the school falls down and kills and injures students. Willie is recognized as the one who stood against the corruption, and off the momentum of good public opinion he is eventually elected as governor.

Willie Stark in the first half of the play is almost as intriguing as Jack. Unlike Jack, his struggles are obvious. He tries to stay true to his values while jumping into the deceitful world of politics for the first time. He learns to abandon naïveté, but disturbingly, he concludes as part of this (as so many politicians do) that voters are stupid and there is no place for transparent discussion of issues. He morphs from a relatively bumbling, kind-hearted and principled man to a suave politician. Willie in the second half of the play is so different that he bears only passing resemblance to the man he once was. Yet the moment he crosses the line from his past self to his present takes place offstage. I can only conclude that Willie’s fall was considered an inevitable result. Watching the process is not important, except to the extent that Jack is caught up in it. In this play, all the characters lack free will – one cannot imagine them making different choices if Jack were not there. The question, then, is why Jack makes the choices he does.

This is the only way I can think about Jack in a way that makes sense: in his cynical youth, he decided that there was no such thing as consistent “higher values” or “morality,” and so he became comfortable with doing the dirty work of others. But as time went on, he came to realize that there were limits and objective standards, lines that he deeply feels he should not have crossed. Yet he did, in part because he had such a stake in seeing himself as “the one who really knows what is going on,” though he seems to have a fantasy about the depths of Willie’s corruption. Visiting his mother and childhood friends reveals the essential conflict between the way they see him and the way he sees himself, which makes him so uncomfortable that he pushes them away. But eventually, he is forced by circumstance to resolve the division within himself.

This interpretation is extremely tentative. I do not know if I would come to the same conclusion upon seeing the play a second time. Those who know about the life of Huey P. Long would certainly bring a different perspective to the play. But the value of it is that it is so opaque. How I interpret the sources of Jack’s struggles says more about me than about the truth of his situation.

Despite its flaws, the worldview of All the King’s Men and Jack’s psychological conflict deeply impressed me. My theatre-major housemate, however, was less impressed. “This should have been a TV miniseries,” she said as we left. The play is long, I grant, but the second half in particular went quickly due to the intense emotional action onstage.

But she had another reason to be unimpressed, and I cannot state that better than in her own words, so: “What is it about male playwrights and feminism? It seems like they listen to us on everything except the sexual relationship thing. They get the intelligence, they get the spunkiness, but when it comes to sex the whole thing is as traditional as ever! I sat through this play and watched Sadie [Burke, Willie Stark’s publicist, played by Deirdre Madigan] turn from a strong character into a weak one because of a sexual relationship. I believe she was a good publicist who made Willie what he was, who was willing to speak the truth when none of the other characters were, and yet she becomes mentally unbalanced because she was dumped! What the hell!”

Clearly we feminists must be underestimating the power of the man juice.

All the King’s Men runs until November 8, 2008.

For those in the mood for daring live theatre, the Book-It Repertory Theatre‘s production of “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues” fills the niche for theatre that still pushes the envelope.

Based on the 1976 Tom Robbins novel, “Cowgirls” follows the hitchhiking travels of Sissy Hankshaw and all the vibrant characters she finds along the way.

Blessed with abnormally large thumbs from birth, Sissy is “the one great passenger” for all the great drivers in the world. From New York City to North Dakota, Sissy roams earning money when she needs it by modeling for The Countess (Brian Thompson), a transvestite tycoon of vaginal perfumes. It’s The Countess who steers Sissy towards Julian (Chris Maslen) a full blooded Indian, though he doesn’t look it. Here, Sissy faces her first real dilemma. She’s enchanted with the freedom the American Indian represents, but her own personal Indian becomes a shut in, unwilling to show Sissy’s huge thumbs in public. Through the rest of the play, Sissy continues to fight for her right to live the way she wants, despite all efforts to get her to conform.

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You know, like the Germans do so fantastically

So I sometimes go into the beer store right after a payday, and in a bad mood and thus search out a beer that I’ve never tried, never heard of, never even put the name on the bottle and the image displayed on the label could be put together. I stumbled upon Aktienbrauerei’s Hell. Yes, indeed, a beer called Hell.

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