Once a Blue Moon Puts You Deep into Another World (5 stars)
Once a Blue Moon (Cada Luna Azul) is a journey through the memories of a Hispanic man, now in American, who takes you back to his old days in a small Argentina village. There is tragedy and things change, but even greater is the joy, which persists. Although fictional, the show was created by lead actor Carlos Uriona based on his actual hometown in 2015, and the show has now come back with some new twists.
The strength of the show is its setting, the immersive environment created by the location, staging, and cast. Double Edge Theatre, in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, has the most beautiful outdoor theater in New England, a real farm with goats, where you move from stage to stage. You’ll find a farmhouse, a stream, a pond, an indoor space, all with plenty of seating.
Unlike a traditional stage, which has defined borders, the visuals and sound for Once a Blue Moon are layered. In addition to the foreground actors playing out a main scene, you’ll see background actors in the farm’s surrounding forest and stream, and background music and the sounds of workers and water at different points all around you. This gives the audience the feeling that you’re in a world that has no limits, that encompasses an entire landscape around you. Actors use fire and splash through the water. You walk across a grass field but with a forest, stream, and pond around you. The show includes aerial dancing, with the actors hanging on dangling wrapped sheets of fabric, flying on wires, or walking on stilts.
There’s nothing else like it in New England. You aren’t just seeing two people on a stage. It conjures the magical feeling of this old time small town, the pride and passion of its people and also Luna, the creative spirit of Latin America, who lives in the forest and connects its villagers to their past. There you’ll experience the fight and horror of locals protesting an outside intrusion, an American logging company that wants to tear down the forest. The locals fight that with protests, and still live their lives with joy and celebration.
You are not only drawn into this world by the acting, dancing, and music; you are also invited to participate. Performers welcome you to clap along and dance with them. It’s a participatory celebration of life and the ancient forest. For show creator Carlos Uriona it’s clearly a way of keeping his old village alive. Things change, but, during this performance, sharing his memory with the audience, the old town persists.
I confirmed with the cast that Once a Blue Moon is meant to wash over you. It’s an experience. That makes it easier to forgive that the audience couldn’t always understand the actors, who sometimes spoke in Spanish and had no microphones to compete with the layered soundscape: splashing washer, singing, music, and workers on the job.
Also, because the show is more about a place, a people, and a feeling more than a plot, it’s easier to forgive the story being loose and sometimes emotionally confused. Its villains are played for comedy, undermining a sense of existential danger, and tragedy is jarringly followed by celebration. But that is life. It reminds me of my favorite quote from literature: It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Old time Argentina was both.
It’s unique, it’s powerful, and it’s a great excuse to spend your whole day or weekend in the Berkshires. 5 stars.
Once a Blue Moon runs through August 2. See more at doubleedgetheatre.org.