New media artist, director, and designer Reid Farrington’s innovative ideas about integrating videoscapes into live theater will find instant favor among fans of The Builders Association and The Wooster Group.
In Gin & “It,” Farrington’s principal sources are Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rope and its original inspiration: a one-act play by British playwright Patrick Hamilton loosely based on the sensationalized Leopold and Loeb murder case of 1924.
Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) skirted the protagonists’ homosexual relationship to satisfy the limitations imposed by the Production Code: the director and cast only referred to this aspect as “it.” In Gin & “It,” this once-taboo subtext is brought out of the closet when Farrington intersects text drawn from the original play, passages of witty repartee from the film, and a full-scale recreation of Hitchcock’s set, where the famed director staged his own technical drama to shoot a film in one take. Farrington and his cast put Hitchcock’s precisely choreographed tech crew in the foreground while they also represent Rope’s main characters as hybrid filmic/human presences caught up in the psychological suspense.
The premiere of Gin & “It” is presented in conjunction with the Wexner Center’s annual Out @ Wex series of film screenings and special events.
