Preston: Moving Company’s play about death makes us think about life

Tracey Maloney has a murdered king she wants to display and a lifetime of fury to unload.

The Details

As the wronged queen Clytemnestra in the Moving Company’s “Memento Vivere,” the Twin Cities stage veteran hauls the body of Agamemnon, the husband she just killed, with a ferocity that makes ancient grievance feel fresh.

Maloney has built a decades-long career on fine craft and penetrating emotion. But this regal rage is something else. Imagine Adele trading powerhouse torch songs for Greek tragedy. The theatrical voltage remains but with a considerably higher body count. Maloney’s performance gives this visually arresting avant-garde work a shot of hot blood at Minneapolis’ Southern Theater.

What is it?

A 90-minute ensemble piece about life, conducted in the long shadow of death, “Memento Vivere” takes its title from the Latin for “remember to live.” It answers “memento mori” — “remember that you will die” — with an equally urgent plea to do something meaningful with the time you have.

Expanded image view

Cast members of the Moving Company's "Memento Vivere" embody elemental human needs.

Dominique Serrand/The Moving Company)

Start to finish?

The production begins and ends with figures lying in half-light, their limbs rising like the tentacles of sea creatures reaching for food or illumination. These primordial images suggest life at its most elemental, with bodies stirring, grasping and needing.

Who’s behind it?

Founded by members of the late, Tony-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the Moving Company retains that troupe’s appetite for theatrical invention. Ex-Jeune Luners Steven Epp, Nathan Keepers and director Dominique Serrand conceived and wrote “Vivere.”

The acting ensemble includes Kenzi Allen, Anna Schloerb and Luverne Seifert. Epp delivers the first words from the floor, projecting into a microphone as he greets the audience as “fellow gravediggers, custodians of the hereafter.”

So much for easing us in.