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Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Problem Radical(s). Written and directed by
Kara Feely; music by Travis Just. Installation by Hannah Dougherty; video
by Daniel Kötter; costume design by Peter Ksander; light design by
Miranda K. Hardy. With Karl Allen, Sarah Dahlen, Francesco Gagliardi and
Caitlin McDonough Thayer; musicians: Kevin Farrell, Travis Just and James
More. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission. At Performance Space 122, 150
First Avenue at East 9th Street. Reviewed at the 9 May performance (at
which Avi Glickstein replaced Sarah Dahlen). Ran 24 April-10 May; now
closed.
The four performers of Problem Radicals(s) are thrown onto a
stage littered with clothes and cultural detritus. Along the upstage wall
are images, pasted onto posterboard, of military jets and various
souped-up vehicles to carry human beings: speed and motion forward
are of the essence here. The sequence of arias and recitatives itself is
different for each performance, but the "set list," unlike those of rock
and jazz bands, isn't hidden, taped behind amplifiers or to the floor, but
worn as an armband by each one of the singers. Those arias and recitatives
often have to do with motion or radicalism: with running or action, often
hysterically exaggerated, and captured by a video camera at stage right
that rotates 360 degrees throughout the opera (though at some delay). Each
one of these sequences is certainly purposeful, and as the armbands
suggest, there is a precise sequence directed to an end of some kind: but
to what end? Or are the performers just unthinkingly going through the
motions?
The new opera from Object Collection is an exploration of contemporary
human activity, from running to self-protection; each one of the
performers is uniquely alienated from the others. Travis Just's
noise-based score, drawn from a variety of sources, provides a
post-Wagnerian soundscape that reflects the haunting and threatening
but hidden motives of the "characters" here, as they engage in a variety
of acts, from violent movement to wry resignation. The satiric targets of
the play are two-fold, the assimilation of military and political
fear into contemporary social life and a post-capitalist consumerism
that aims to consume them all. In one of the most memorable sequences,
Caitlin McDonough Thayer attempts to wildly don each one of the dozens of
clothing pieces that litter the floor until she is nearly hidden in layer
upon layer of shirts, bathing suits, socks, jackets and scarves; finally,
reaching a point at which her bodily movement is paralyzed by the
clothing, she relaxes and begins to strip each piece from her body, one at
a time. We are relieved, too, at her final escape from her entrapment in
the clothes (and happy to be free from this self-suffocation as
well).
The performers in this post-structuralist gesamtkunstwerk
– Karl Allen, Francesco Gagliardi, Caitlin McDonough Thayer and Avi
Glickstein (standing in for Sarah Dahlen at the performance I attended)
– are always intent, often charming and unerringly expressive through
the moods that whip past through the evening, and this strangely distanced
human expressivity draws attention to the seemingly disparate and
disconnected fragments of life that comprise Problem Radical(s).
For there is life there, hidden beneath all those images and clothes, and
it does require a radical revisioning to see it – which Feely
and Just provide.
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Superfluities
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George Hunka
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Theory and polemic
95 Sentences About Theatre (2007)
Organum I (2006-2007)
Organum
II (2008-2009)
Critique of
Tragedy (2010-continuing)
Notes
Howard Barker
1
Howard
Barker 2
Samuel
Beckett 1
Samuel
Beckett 2
Bertolt
Brecht
Richard
Foreman 1
Richard
Foreman 2
Je Suis
Sang
Sarah
Kane
Music
Marilyn
Nonken
Saint Oedipus
Contact
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by George
Hunka
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