Another adaptation of a Norwegian work,Manfred Karge’s "The Conquest of the SouthPole,"is on stage now fromSnowlion Repertory Company (at the Portland Ballet Studio Theater,vividlydirected by Al D’Andrea), and it,too,is driven by atransformative ritual:InRumford, Maine,a group of unemployed millworkerssublimatetheir boredom and shameby re-enactingthe1911journey of Roald Amundsen and his teamto the South Pole.Spurred and bullied on bytheirwild-eyed ringleader Slupianek (Ian Carlsen),the men explore “the Antarctic,”their own frailties, and theirstrengths.
Seiffert (Eric Darrow Worthley) endeavors a conquest while the ensemble looks on.
The men make their theater in the Rumford attic of Braukman (Ashanti Williams), an especially sensitive member of the group, in a space piled with scaffolding, crates, tarps, and — often — the drying laundry of Braukman’s impatient and very literal wife Luisa (Maergen Soliman, sharp and clarion). Slupianek casts Braukman and two other friends — burly Buscher (Cullen Burke) and suicidal Seiffert (Eric Darrow Worthley) — as Amundsen’s fellow explorers. And the intellectually disabled Frankieboy (Caleb Streadwick), whom the other four jocularly treat as a mascot, plays the expedition’s favorite husky. Their exploits, as they don parkas, pretend-cook pemmican, and speak in bold explorer-voices, have both the giddiness at boys at play and the stakes of men at impasse.
