The Erasings: A hypothetical review of the hypothetical play based on an actual film and album.

“Eraser begins with a savage attack… Then into this fray comes John Kruger, wearing a ski mask Kruger is so tough he can haul two corpses across the lawn at the same time. What a guy.” - Janet Maslin, New York Times, 1996

“Many people find Thom Yorke disturbing… Yorke comes on as a Lieutenant Columbo of the psyche, rumpled and haggard, who always has just one more question.” – Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone magazine, 2006

Like 1996s, Chuck Russell directed, Eraser, Thom York’s album The Eraser is part action, part drama and full-on tragic romance.

But unlike the Swarzenneger starred film, the nine song “surprise” solo disc, by the most important front man of “the most important band” released on XL records in July of 2006, is filled with fully comprehensible musings on life, love, stardom and all the entrails that are their bi-products.

The promotional material for the film promised that John Kruger, its main character, “will erase your past to protect your future.” On the title track of the album Thom York sings, “The more you try to erase me/The more, the more/The more that I appear.”

It is fitting then, that in 2008 the popular modern playwright Satirius Avedon should combine the two into a compelling three-act play titled The Erasings.

The Erasings is not a deviation from Avedon’s prior work. On the contrary, Mr. Avedon sticks to his tried, true and very profitable formula of pitting unlikely works of consumer media art against each other in the form of Broadway plays – his prior hit paired Madonna’s Music album with Robert Wise’s classic The Sound Of Music and tap danced its way to the tune of $60 million in profits.

Below the reviewer takes an act-by-act look at the play and its earnest, sometimes to a fault, portrayal of its previous incarnations.

Act I (The Eraser, Analyze, The Clock)
“We’re way beyond bullshit here.” – Donahue, Eraser
“There’s no time…to make sense.” – Thom York, Analyze

The above quotes tell a lot about the content of the works they are connected to. York’s album famously hit the ground running with the title track and caused fans to do a sonic double take due to its pumped-up vocals and pop sound. Subsequent to the release of OK Computer in 1997 many had forgotten that Radiohead had its roots in catchy ballads, obviously Thom hadn’t.

The poppy track serves as the play’s opening score and finds John Kruger, the Arnold Swarzenneger character now brilliantly played by a previously unknown Carl Gladstone, at his desk in the offices of the U.S. Marshalls’ Witness Protection Program. He’s assigned a new task, that of ‘erasing’ the beautiful Lee Cullen (Rosario Knowles) who has come up on information regarding a terrorist threat.

The other two songs Analyze and The Clock, aptly score subsequent scenes that see Kruger meeting, then finding a romantic interest in Lee.

As Yorke croons in his signature half-whine/half-angry voice “The fences that you cannot climb / The sentences that do not rhyme / In all that you can ever change / The one you’re looking for”, Kruger is engaged in surveillance of his prospective client outside her apartment.

Later, when Kruger finally meets her face to face, the meeting is accented by the futuristic sounds associated with the almost totally laptop produced tracks featured on Yorke’s The Eraser. “Time is running out for us,” sings Yorke, “But you just move the hands upon the clock / You throw coins in the wishing well / For us / You just move your hands upon the wall”, and the audience knows that the love that is kindling between the two lead characters will not last.

Act II (Black Swan, Skip Divided, Atoms For Peace)
Love and war. Breaks hearts, kills men.

The first scene of act two opens with a crescendo of sound and lovemaking. This is not true to the film, but as the lyrics “I’m a dog / I’m a dog / I’m a lapdog / I am your lapdog” from the song Skip Divided boom from the theater’s wonderful surround sound, the audience can’t help but see that the playwright has decided to go where Hollywood feared to tread.

Lee is obviously no match for the brawn that is being thrust around by Kruger, but under her womanly powers he is indeed her lapdog. There is an air of suspicion permeating the post coital conversation and one cannot help but suspect that Lee is in some way connect to the faction of enemy agents within the United States government.

The following scenes, like the songs, are a convoluted mix of emotions. The audience is not sure whether they should dance, cry or dance and cry. It is a brilliant climax that wells up unusual feelings as Kruger discovers that the U.S. Marshall Robert Deguerin, Kruger’s boss, is the enemy within that has set out to ‘erase’ both Kruger and Lee. “So many lies / So many lies / So many lies / So feel the love come off of them / And take me in your arms.”

Act III (And It Rained All Night, Harrowdown Hill, Cymbal Rush)
It is not hard for one to understand the hushed bru-ha that surrounded the 2006 release of The Eraser.

Yorke even went as far as to publicly thank the band in the liner notes of his CD for having complete faith in him.

Billed as a solo album, the tracks that now serve as score to the play sound quite similar to the material Radiohead released on their subsequent album, though more pared down.

It is this digitally austere aesthetic, produced by Nigel Godrich, that Avedon uses to dramatic effect in the closing act of his play.

Determined to fight off the baddies and save the damsel in distress, the Kruger in Avedon’s play must dodge various on-stage explosions in what mimics a real-life version of the ages-old video game Donkey Kong. Each set of silent fireworks, so bright it temporarily blinds the eyes, is offset by the music of The Eraser in the mock slo-mo sequence.

Flash – “The tick tock tick of a ticking time bomb / Fifty feet of concrete underground” – Flash – “Did I fall or was I pushed? / And where’s the blood?” – Flash – “All the rooms were numbered / And the losers turned away.”

In the end the good guy saves the beautiful leading lady by blocking a bullet with his body. A poetic act that is very much in line with Mr. Yorke’s solo album on which he wears his heart on his sleeve, daring his fans to rip it off.

In a love that could not have been this seems to be the ultimate way to fulfill the Shakespearian prophesy. Kruger dies in a pool of blood as Lee clutches him to her bosom. “It’s all boiling over. All boiling over. Your little voice. Your little voice”, she says reciting lyrics from Thom Yorke’s most tragic song on The Eraser, the album’s final track Cymbal Rush.

Though Rusell’s film, Eraser, notoriously bombed and Yorke’s album, The Eraser, had writers and fans dubbing it Kid B (a backhanded compliment based on the mixed feelings about the Radiohead album Kid A), Sitirius Avedon’s play, The Erasings, is worthy of every Emmy it is sure to win at the 2008 awards.

also published on the PixelSurgeon website … until they came to their senses

[from me]
I’m not sure if this works. It might be a bit too left field. I had fun trying to combine a review that would defy the mighty power of the PixelSurgeon CPU by combining a current music review (Thom Yorke’s The Eraser) with a classic movie review (Chuck Russell’s Eraser). The result is about as confusing as why the material on The Eraser wasn’t just released as a Radiohead album.
Have a read and tell me what you think.

[from the PS crew]
You may have noticed that there is a different Eraser review on PS than the one you sent us. Your review was actually live for a short while, but it caused a lot of controversy amongst the PS editors from LOVE IT! to WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??? On reflection, we decided that a more traditional approach was probably better, and although you had told us you could reel the review in to something more like our usual reviews, we actually had another review waiting in the wings, so we swapped that one in.