Lintel,’ ‘Lambshead’ celebrate ephemeral obsessions

A one-man show and a literary anthology uncover the fantastical histories behind tangible objects

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  • AURORA THEATRE
  • THE OVERDUE FINE IS ASTRONOMICAL: Stephen Coulter in ‘Underneath the Lintel’

Hoarders would salivate at the attention the play Underneath the Lintel and the anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities pay to objects, both mundane and exotic. Both works have subtitles that signal their attention to tangible items. Glen Berger also calls his play “An Impressive Presentation of Lovely Evidences,” while the book, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, has the less ironic subbed, “Exhibits, Oddities, Images and Stories from Top Authors and Artist.”

Lintel and Lambshead both rely on the narrative trope that invites an obsessive, near-microscopic examination of a material object to uncover unexpected insights. To use a word savored by Lintel, “ephemera” can hold more significance than first meets the eye. Metafictional authors like Umberto Eco and the late Jorge Luis Borges would delight in taken a mysterious yet seemingly ordinary oddment — like a postcard or an obsolete scientific instrument — would lead to increasingly deep layers of narrative the more the protagonist studies it. Dan Brown’s books like The Da Vinci Code, though much more accessible, have a similar love of research and the history of things.

Aurora Theatre presents a funny and engrossing remount of Actors Theatre of Atlanta’s 2003 production of Underneath the Lintel, directed by Jay Freer. The monologue play stars Stephen Coulter as an unnamed, absent-minded librarian from Holland lecturing his audience about his mysterious findings. When an unknown person returns a Baedeker’s Travel Guide to the Dutch library 113 overdue, the librarian embarks on an increasingly far-flung and outlandish investigation of who checked out the book.