Before diving into the spectacular storytelling via dance that defines “Message in a Bottle,” some context about the narrative that unspools amid some two dozen songs by Sting and a dance corps of stunning kinetic prowess.
Imagine the states of Illinois, California, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan emptied of all their roughly 110 million combined inhabitants — every person gone, every family uprooted, every community vanished. That’s roughly the number of people currently displaced on planet earth, driven from their homes by conflict and/or persecution. Those trapped in that ongoing global nightmare are at the at the heart of “Message,” in a very limited run through March 3 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.
In shaping this combination of dance concert/juke-box musical, director-choreographer Kate Prince uses everything from break dancing to ballet to tell the story of a family forced from their homes and into a perilous journey that moves from angry oceans to barbed wire-encircled camps. The pre-recorded music, with new arrangements by Alex Lacamoire, will make your heart thump. The dancing is a visual feast.
There is no dialogue in the production: “Message in a Bottle” is pure movement and music. It is also a stunning display of potently emotive physicality, delivered by a cast whose acrobatic grace often seems to defy the fundamental laws of gravity.
Sting’s music — from his days with the Police in the 1980s through his solo career — has long made lush, highly dramatic compositions his stock in trade. It’s a sensibility that Prince uses to great advantage in a show she created with her eponymous ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company.
“Message” opens with joy, as we meet a family draped in flowing garments the color of robin’s eggs and sunsets. At the heart of the story are three siblings, Leto (Lukas McFarlane), Mati (Dylan Mayoral) and Tana (Jessey Stol), children of devoted parents Gaia (Daniella May) and Quest (Nestor Garcia Gonzalez, who sustained an injury in Act 1 and was replaced by Gavin Vincent for the show’s second act.
“Desert Rose” establishes the family’s love for each other and their community with a fast-moving montage that’s dizzyingly athletic. Leto falls in love with Roxanne (Lara Renaud) to the playful strains of “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic,” and a wedding overflowing with jubilation fills the stage to the sonic backdrop of “Fields of Gold.”
The shimmering warmth of those initial numbers is chilled to deeply ominous effect when distant bombs suddenly light up the sky beyond the wedding, with apprehension and dread replacing happiness with a cold, certain inevitably. “King of Pain” follows, the song infusing the story with anguish like poisoned ether.
Prince doesn’t hold back in depicting the perils faced by the siblings. As the haunting stains of “Inshallah” (an Arabic phrase that translates as “if God wills”), we see them embark on a terrifying ocean journey, their orange life jackets paltry protection against massive curling waves (excellent work by video designer Andrzej Goulding) that rise like faceless monsters, dwarfing the dancers as they threaten to swallow them whole.
Later, they’re engulfed not by waves but by towering walls topped with barbed wire. “Every Breath You Take” has been a profoundly disturbing song since it dropped in 1983, but here it takes on new dimensions. Instead of the anthem of a single stalker, we see a phalanx of brutal guards without faces, black head-pieces obscuring their eyes as they assault the women in the camp while their families look on helplessly.
Prince closes the first act with the title tune, and as the ensemble pirouettes and leaps and hurdles their bodies skyward, their “S.O.S.” demands that the world notice their plight.
With the second half, joy thunders back into the narrative. “Fields of Gold” is revisited, this time as a ray inextinguishable hope. And with “The Empty Chair” and “They Dance Alone,” the ensemble embodies hope’s siblings, resilience and endurance.
“Message in a Bottle” gets a fabulous assist from its designers. Natasha Chivers cinematic lighting design turns the stage into a moving watercolor, sometimes of a world under a merciless sun, sometimes in the coolest twilight. And Anna Fleischle’s flowing costumes move with dancers beautifully, whether Prince’s choreography demands whirling balletic elegance or jagged, spikey aggression.
The biggest problem with “Message in a Bottle” is that it is only here for the next few days. See it while you can.
