The Crocodile
FortyFive Downstairs
Director: Cassandra Fumi
Cast: James Cerche, Joey Lai, Cait Spiker, and Jessica Stanley
Set & Costume Design: Dann Barber
Costume Supervisor & Maker: Alexandra Aldrich
Design Associate: Savanna Wegman
Sound Design: Gabriel Bethune
Lighting Design: Spencer Herd
Stage Manager: Luci Watts
Assistant Stage Manager: Finn McLeish
“Gabriel Bethune’s sound design strikes just the right note of carnivalesque menace. It could use slight tweaking to avoid unnecessarily drowning out the actors ... though that’s done deliberately, too, to evoke the chaotic over-stimulation of contemporary life.”
Cameron Woodhead, The Age
The show’s nature is largely Farcical and Absurd. Due to the grandiose nature of the show and the many references to song and dance within the text, I decided to take a more orchestral approach to the work. Drawing comparisons to Saint-Saëns and his Carnival of Animals, as well as Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique.
Following the line of the Carnival of Animals, I wanted to create sonic and textural motifs for animals and characters, the more natural the sound, the more reflective of the natural order, and the more distorted or electronic reflecting the disturbed and grotesque.
Here are two moments we hear the eponymous crocodile. Once at his introduction, the other when eating Zach.