KOMISAR'S CURTAIN-RAISERS
by Lucy Komisar
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| The Gardzienice Center for Theatre Practices mixes ancient Greek and Christian symbols in Wlodzimierz Staniewski's "Metamorphosis." | |
(1)"Metamorphosis"
(2)"The Cat's Paw"
(3)"Now That Communism is Dead, My Life Feels Empty!"
(4)"Optic Fever"
"Metamorphosis or The Golden Donkey"
written and directed by Wlodzimierz Staniewski
Produced by La MaMa in association with Double Edge Theatre
The Annex at La MaMa ETC, 66 East 4th Street
475-7710
www.doubleedgetheatre.org/staniews.htm
Opened January 24, 2001
Closed
Reviewed by Lucy Komisar January 26, 2001
There's a sense of the primordial in Wlodzimierz Staniewski's striking
musical evocation of the ancient Greeks. Part song, with a hint of opera,
part twirling dance, and a great deal of primitive drama. The actors
sometimes seem to be Polish peasants with twisted faces, or they are wrapped
in white togas, or bear crowns of thorns, or exhibit a tail and a "hee
haw."The Polish theater company, Gardzienice Center for Theatre Practices, an ensemble Staniewski founded in 1978, presents here a story from the ancient Greek theater using the tradition of the time, in which dialogue was sung.
"Metamorphosis" or "The Golden Donkey" was written by Apuleius in the second century. The hero is transformed into an ass and then, through his journey, which includes Christ carrying the thick pole of his cross, he is changed back to human who has reached a higher spiritual plane.
The sounds seem like a dissonant opera, sometimes shouting, chanting, ululating. The music is produced by a cello, a traditional box accordion, finger cymbals, a pipe. It evokes the music of antiquity that the director believes lives in indigenous people. Here, the folk art of the Carpathian Mountain in Ukraine is the inspiration. The movement is frenetic dancing, whirling, leaping, perhaps like folk dances of 2000 years ago or pre-Christian rites.
The set is a long table covered by a white cloth with two wine-colored bands. Behind that is a high sheet curtain into which is cut a rough dark brown wood arched door. At the side stand two round rose-lighted panels. The women wear white flowing shifts; the men are in back pants and shirts.
In a demonstration-talk after the one-hour production, Staniewski presents a theatrical essay. He and the cast use slide projections of ancient Greek stone and papyrus that show texts with fragments of musical notations to which the dramas were sung, not spoken. The songs, Staniewski says, are based on exclamation. The first vocal gestures were shouts of pain, of joy, shouts to gods, or self-expression through a dissonance that led to possession. Psyche is shown as a possessed hysteric. He explains that the ass was a popular primordial figure and that the "hee haw" was used in religious music.
Mimicking the positions of figures drawn on Greek vases, which you see flashed on the screen, the dancers show the origins of their movements. It's an exhilarating display of history and art.
"The Cat's Paw"
by Mac Wellman, directed by Daniel Aukin
Produced by Soho Rep & Theodore C. Rodgers
46 Walker Street, below Canal bet Bway & Church
479-7979
www.sohorep.org
Opened December 21, 2000
Closed
Reviewed by Lucy Komisar January 17, 2001
Mac Wellman's funny, terse play about romanticism and reality, the strong
and the weak in love and life and politics, is set as encounters between two
sets of mothers and daughters atop landmark buildings that ought to afford
clear vision.The dialogue is edgy and witty, the acting is comically perfect, and Daniel Aukin's direction is clean and fast-paced. This is the kind of gem for which Off-Off-Broadway was created.
Curiously, the play is subtitled, "A Meditation on the Don Juan Theme," and between the scenes, country and western singers warble about how men get away with a double standard.
These women give despair no sympathy. Mothers, daughters and friends spar and jab at each other, trading comments that challenge and wound.
On a white tile floor slanted to the audience, the observation deck of the Empire State Building, Jane (Jen Davis) is tense, and her conversation with her mother, Hildegard (Nancy Franklin), is morose: "How long after you leap do you make impact?" And, "No one can ask you what your life has been like since you lost that last shred of hope in humanity."
In a vague reference to an apparently disastrous affair, Jane declares, unbidden, "I don't want to talk about Bermuda." It seems to underlie her distress, for she repeats it through the exchange. Her impossible, unsympathetic mother quips, "It's the name of an onion, a species of shorts." Hildegard is described sarcastically as having arrived at wizened maturity, "wizendom." The two trade pseudo profundities. Franklin is wonderfully expressive in an understated and quizzical way, and Davis telegraphs growing exasperation with every bit of body language.
If a mother can't be supportive, what about a friend? At the World Trade Center observation deck, Jane meets Jo (Ann Talman), who reproaches her for letting herself be erased; "You have become commodified, and I'm not talk about Bermuda." Jane accuses her of "boring with a drill bit" into her mind, and Jo retorts that she's romantic and self-involved, in thrall to love as an "insidious itch." But Jo has an "Acapulco" that's rather like Jane's "Bermuda." Talman smoothly captures the sensible mood of this sensitive character.
Is there no answer for it? Comes the modern woman, Jo's teenage daughter Lindsay (Alicia Goranson), who has had it with "doltish adults." She doesn't want fairy tales; she wants reality. Goranson in a blue beret and black horn-rimmed glasses, is flawless as the precocious, insufferable, smart aleck private school kid who, rejecting the romanticism of her mother' s generation, dislikes the sea, because "it's a grotesque abstraction." She prefers the roach motel she finds on the floor of the arm of the Statue of Liberty, into which they have illegally snuck.
Lindsay calls her liberal mother bogus and sentimental. "America hates the weak because they are weak," she declares. (Cat's paws are people used by other people.) "People want strong men like Bush and the poet, Cheney." That must make this a play for our times.
"Now That Communism is Dead, My Life Feels Empty!"
written and directed by Richard Foreman
Produced by the Ontological Hysteric Theater
St. Mark's Church, 131 EAst 10th Street
420-1916
www.ontological.com
Opened January 28, 2001
Closes April 29, 2001
Reviewed by Lucy Komisar January 27, 2001
Think surreal vaudeville and don't try to make too much sense of what you're
seeing. There are a few obvious political statements in Richard Foreman's
fantasy about the world's recent portentous strategic upheaval, but they are
rather obvious. It's the images that dominate, and here Foreman is an
acquired taste. To the uninitiated, many of the visions seem rather silly if
imaginative. It's surreal political commentary, if as if Dali were the
pundit.The stream of consciousness set is awash with crumpled newspapers, hanging lampshades, pillows and sandbags, photos of men that look like Russian revolutionaries with bullet holes in their foreheads. Latin and Hebrew letters spot the walls; a blackboard holds scrawled writing; and the stage is painted with white stripes.
Foreman has written, "The problem is that "linear, narrative development in the theater always ends with a denouement, which delivers a meaning, ie. moral." This reinforces "the spectators' behavioral conditioning." Foreman wants impulse to "introduce a creative wobble to the straight and narrow of well-disciplined mental life." He wants words to surge from the unconscious.
Well, there's a lot of unconscious, or subconscious, or stream of consciousness here. And just to make clear to whom all of this is addressed, plexi-glass panels between the audience and the stage make you see your own reflection.
The characters are a couple of erstwhile hippies, Freddy (Tony Torn) and Big Fred (Jay Smith) and a half a dozen harem-style characters (five women and one man) in muslin pants, head coverings tied Arab style, rouged navels and black-rimmed glasses. They begin by wiping up the end of communism with towels.
Big Fred is a fellow with a pillow chest, black leather skullcap, muslin robe, black boots, red sash and long blonde hair. Freddy has dress slacks, vest, dress shirt, tie, a jeweled headband and a red nose. He announces, "If this is the future, I don't like it," and returns with a make-believe wooden guitar. You hear the sound of smashing glass, which is repeated throughout. He looks at the harm folk laid out on the ground and remarks, "I feel terrible about all these unconscious people."
The background music is low jazzy piano chords. Occasionally, a man runs through the scene carrying a red flag; then there's more crashing glass.
Big Fred explains, "So many things are dead. That's why so many people see emptiness in plenty." He speaks slowly, "I like those $350 shoes he's wearing." Freddy ripostes, "Get your own expensive shoes." Sometimes Fred has a Russian accent.
A box wrapped in brown paper arrives. Big Fred says it's a head. A disembodied voice declares: "Red communism is dead, my friend."
Then we get a political lesson. Big Fred holds a black wood box and says his dog is inside. It represents the docile public. It has a drawer into which food is put. He says, "The dog can't bite when it has no access to food." He explains that when the drawer is closed, the dog has access to food, but when the drawer is closed, there is no opening to the outside world, so the dog cannot bite.
"Bravo to you Fred," declares Freddy, who goose steps to more crashing glass. "Big Fred replies, "My dog's happiness, this is important to me." He declares, "Thank God communism is dead, a system which treated human beings like dogs. As opposed to the other systems, of course. Now there's capitalism, which treats people like dogs somewhat less often than the dead communist system."
A disembodied voice proclaims, "I am not a communist." One of the harem women gives Freddy a lollipop. He turns into dog.
Freddy warns, "They were dangerous people with dangerous egalitarian ideas. They might be hiding inside space people." On cue, a fellow with an outer-space rubber mask appears. Big Fred, who has acquired a Russian accent, declares, "A pit in a fruit is a radio receiver." And "legions are in the street," as more people with red flags race through to shattering glass. When a gorilla doll appears, Big Fred chops off its head.
The Messiah arrives in the shape of a dog in a party hat above a mystical round panel with Hebrew letters; sounds evoke a blaring carnival. The harem girls flip mirrors.
Foreman's props and shticks are often diverting, but the whole is missing what Foreman reviles - a more linear play.
"Optic Fever"
written and directed by Theodora Skipitares, with additional writing by
David Adjmi
Produced by La MaMa in association with Skysaver Productions
The Annex at La MaMa ETC, 66 East 4th Street
475-7710
www.lamama.org
Opened January 1, 2001
Closed
Reviewed by Lucy Komisar January 6, 2001
Theodora Skipitares is known for her stunning use of puppets to tell rich,
historic tales. "The Harlot's Progress" in 1998 was a riveting chamber
opera, based on the engravings of William Hogarth, which followed an
innocent peasant girl into the city, to the giddy demimonde, debauchery,
disgrace, and death. "Body of Crime" in 1996 and 1999 traced women in
prison, beginning in medieval times."Optic Fever" is a lot less ambitious and also less satisfying. There are some scenes of typical Skipitares wit and humor, many that exhibit visual flights of fancy, and a few that seem pointless. The connection is supposed to be the way artists see, but the episodes are disjointed.
Leonardo Da Vinci, swelling up (actually, down) from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, above viewers' heads, sets the stage for the discovery of the optical principals of perspective.
There is a fascinating, if not especially relevant, scene of shadow puppets disrobing and making graphic, erotic love. Renaissance paintings are wheeled in.
The puppet wife of Paolo Uccello, a contemporary of Da Vinci, is irritated by her husband's lack of attention and pulls down her dress to show off her breasts. Their redheaded daughter wields a brush and insists she will paint. If this is a feminist statement, it creates an odd dichotomy.
Via a robot on wheels, one learns that Leonardo designed and promoted an arsenal of weapons. Other puppets and images focus on perspective and the properties of the eye.
The best part occurs when five miniature Freuds, each in a vested grey suit, hop one after another atop a video monitor showing "The Mona Lisa" and try to figure it out.
David First's harpsichord music provides an elegant background. However, one feels that Skipitares' puppets are still looking for a play. [Komisar]
Theater critic Lucy Komisar gives pre-show briefings and post-show discussions for theater parties to enrich playgoers' experiences. She'll also help find an appropriate show and make or advise on arrangements. Interested parties may telephone (212) 929-1610 for information.
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