Yes, it’s that Jim Henson but you won’t find any Muppets here. The Cube was an hour-long TV play made in 1969 for NBC Experiment in Television, a series with a contents list that shows the US channel making a break from the conservatism and formula-chasing that’s always dogged the medium. Henson co-wrote The Cube with Jerry Juhl, and directed the play himself.
The scenario is the kind of thing you’d be more likely to find in an animated film: an unnamed man (Richard Schaal) inside a room-sized cubic space which he’s unable to leave. Furniture and other objects appear then vanish; doors open in the walls from time to time, other people enter and leave but the man himself is always told his exit through the doors his visitors use is forbidden. Either that or he misses the opportunity to leave when he might have the chance. The visitors range from the helpful (Arnie the repairman) to the annoying and the hostile, especially the latter. While enduring a variety of taunts and insults the man is asked to consider the quantum nature of reality, and the possibility that he may be insane or even dead. Henson and Juhl keep things light for the most part—Juhl was later the head writer for The Muppet Show—but it’s easy to see how their idea might shift into nightmare with only a slight change of emphasis. Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (1997) is only the most obvious example of this.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Telephone Box