In this performance, characters and happenings are amplified through the use of lights, devices, opera music, distortion of voices and television screens. Suddenly, the scenario becomes a place of surprising events, where performers and objects move constantly, and where those actions overlap with movies that are projected on televisions and large screens.
The Wooster Group present their own theatrical vision that challenges the expectations of viewers. In "To You The Birdie" for example, rackets, men, skirts and funny sounds create a bizarre atmosphere that is enjoyable to the eyes and the senses. The Wooster Group is unique in its performances and communicates its art effectively. The theatrical representations are out of the ordinary, and that coexist in total harmony with the arrangements of sound, lights, microphones and movies projected on scene.
By BEN BRANTLEY
Gertrude Stein was right, after all. So it would seem, in any case, from the testimony provided in the bedazzling new theater piece from the Wooster Group, ''House/Lights.''
This multimedia collage, inspired by Stein's opera libretto of 1938, ''Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights,'' makes nothing less than a case for Cubism, which Stein famously advocated as a patron of painters and practiced as a writer, as the dominant sensibility of this century. It's the perfect show to see in 1999, finding in the prophecies of artists of decades ago the disjunctive present in which we now live.
Gertrude Stein was right, after all. So it would seem, in any case, from the testimony provided in the bedazzling new theater piece from the Wooster Group, ''House/Lights.''
This multimedia collage, inspired by Stein's opera libretto of 1938, ''Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights,'' makes nothing less than a case for Cubism, which Stein famously advocated as a patron of painters and practiced as a writer, as the dominant sensibility of this century. It's the perfect show to see in 1999, finding in the prophecies of artists of decades ago the disjunctive present in which we now live.
Hold the groans, please, and the dismissive rolling of the eyes. While the intellectual ambitions of ''House/Lights,'' now in an open-ended run at the Performing Garage in SoHo, may be arrogantly grand, there is nothing dry or academic in the experience of the show. As a mind- scrambling entertainment, there's nothing else like it around; it turns disorientation into a primary sensual pleasure, even as it raises terrifying thoughts about the deeply mixed blessings of technological progress.
Through the use of the latest tools of that technology, the Wooster Group has assembled a portrait, both fractured and fluid, of a world in which any set sense of chronology, culture or identity can no longer be taken for granted.
That's the Faustian bargain that Stein deals with, in her typically elliptical way, in her original text, in which the Faust figure is the inventor of artificial light, altering forever the natural order
Gertrude Stein was right, after all. So it would seem, in any case, from the testimony provided in the bedazzling new theater piece from the Wooster Group, ''House/Lights.''
This multimedia collage, inspired by Stein's opera libretto of 1938, ''Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights,'' makes nothing less than a case for Cubism, which Stein famously advocated as a patron of painters and practiced as a writer, as the dominant sensibility of this century. It's the perfect show to see in 1999, finding in the prophecies of artists of decades ago the disjunctive present in which we now live.
Gertrude Stein was right, after all. So it would seem, in any case, from the testimony provided in the bedazzling new theater piece from the Wooster Group, ''House/Lights.''
This multimedia collage, inspired by Stein's opera libretto of 1938, ''Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights,'' makes nothing less than a case for Cubism, which Stein famously advocated as a patron of painters and practiced as a writer, as the dominant sensibility of this century. It's the perfect show to see in 1999, finding in the prophecies of artists of decades ago the disjunctive present in which we now live.
Hold the groans, please, and the dismissive rolling of the eyes. While the intellectual ambitions of ''House/Lights,'' now in an open-ended run at the Performing Garage in SoHo, may be arrogantly grand, there is nothing dry or academic in the experience of the show. As a mind- scrambling entertainment, there's nothing else like it around; it turns disorientation into a primary sensual pleasure, even as it raises terrifying thoughts about the deeply mixed blessings of technological progress.
Through the use of the latest tools of that technology, the Wooster Group has assembled a portrait, both fractured and fluid, of a world in which any set sense of chronology, culture or identity can no longer be taken for granted.
That's the Faustian bargain that Stein deals with, in her typically elliptical way, in her original text, in which the Faust figure is the inventor of artificial light, altering forever the natural order
of time. Under the incisive, spectacularly resourceful direction of Elizabeth LeCompte, that text
acquires at least another 60 years' worth of levels of displacement.
Live performance is juxtaposed with what emerges from an assortment of television screens that record, splinter and transform what is happening onstage until you're no longer sure which image has the greatest reality. Voices, too, are mechanically distorted and fragmented. What is the source of what you're hearing? (Since this sort of aural confusion is now an unwanted commonplace in overmiked Broadway musicals, it is especially gratifying to find the Wooster Group making sardonic use of the same phenomenon.) Stein wrote that movies would change forever the very way we look at things. Ms. LeCompte makes it clear that this was just the beginning. Jim Findlay's metal grid of a set features, in addition to phalanxes of video screens and assorted electric bulbs (the uncanny lighting is by Jennifer Tipton), a laptop computer at center stage. And in the evening's master of ceremonies, the magnificent Kate Valk, we have a creature of astonishing artificiality, a tin-voiced 1930's-style beauty with marcelled hair and bee- stung lips who might be a digitally manufactured composite of movie stars. She's the ultimate screen siren, happiest in two dimensions.
There is something unnervingly languorous about Ms. Valk's presence, even as she adjusts microphones, angles herself for yet another small-screen close-up and goes through some frenetically choreographed pantomimes. She suggests a centuries-old vampire prostitute, tired of turning tricks but still amazingly proficient at doing so. She may not look like Faustus, the role the program says she is playing, but she is clearly someone (or is it something?) who has sold her soul, or lost it, a long time ago.
It is to Ms. Valk that the principal duties of reading Stein's text fall, including narrative, song lyrics and stage directions. (In reading ''Dr. Faustus,'' it's not always clear which of these elements is which.) Her rushed, mechanical, Betty Boop-ish voice, swathed in synthesizer- induced reverberations, oddly matches the neutrality that Stein aimed for in her cadenced, repetitious prose. (Quick sample: ''You fool you devil how can you know, you can you tell me so, if I am the only who can know what I know then no devil can tell me so. . . .'')
Ms. Valk is clearly the (oops, I was about to say soul) center of the evening, but it is impossible, as in all Wooster Group productions, to disassociate her from the other performers. Here they include Suzzy Roche, looking like someone who never left the Electric Circus, as a snaggle- toothed Mephistopheles; gray-haired Roy Faudree as the Boy who visits Faustus and Ari Fliakos as Faustus's dog, who says nothing but ''thank you'' in a raspy, hung-over-sounding voice. Both Tanya Selvaratnam and Helen Eve Pickett play the Marguerite figure, who is given two separate names in Stein's text.
This fission of character is typical of the evening. In addition to telling the story of Faust according to Stein, ''House/Lights'' weaves in the plot of ''Olga's House of Shame,'' a 1964 cult film by Joseph Mawra. It's like a seedier, more sinister version of a Roger Corman movie, with buxom and studly jewel thieves inflicting all manner of sexual torture upon one another. (It also involves the initiation of a young woman into this ring of sadism, so there is a Faustian parallel of sorts.)
Live performance is juxtaposed with what emerges from an assortment of television screens that record, splinter and transform what is happening onstage until you're no longer sure which image has the greatest reality. Voices, too, are mechanically distorted and fragmented. What is the source of what you're hearing? (Since this sort of aural confusion is now an unwanted commonplace in overmiked Broadway musicals, it is especially gratifying to find the Wooster Group making sardonic use of the same phenomenon.) Stein wrote that movies would change forever the very way we look at things. Ms. LeCompte makes it clear that this was just the beginning. Jim Findlay's metal grid of a set features, in addition to phalanxes of video screens and assorted electric bulbs (the uncanny lighting is by Jennifer Tipton), a laptop computer at center stage. And in the evening's master of ceremonies, the magnificent Kate Valk, we have a creature of astonishing artificiality, a tin-voiced 1930's-style beauty with marcelled hair and bee- stung lips who might be a digitally manufactured composite of movie stars. She's the ultimate screen siren, happiest in two dimensions.
There is something unnervingly languorous about Ms. Valk's presence, even as she adjusts microphones, angles herself for yet another small-screen close-up and goes through some frenetically choreographed pantomimes. She suggests a centuries-old vampire prostitute, tired of turning tricks but still amazingly proficient at doing so. She may not look like Faustus, the role the program says she is playing, but she is clearly someone (or is it something?) who has sold her soul, or lost it, a long time ago.
It is to Ms. Valk that the principal duties of reading Stein's text fall, including narrative, song lyrics and stage directions. (In reading ''Dr. Faustus,'' it's not always clear which of these elements is which.) Her rushed, mechanical, Betty Boop-ish voice, swathed in synthesizer- induced reverberations, oddly matches the neutrality that Stein aimed for in her cadenced, repetitious prose. (Quick sample: ''You fool you devil how can you know, you can you tell me so, if I am the only who can know what I know then no devil can tell me so. . . .'')
Ms. Valk is clearly the (oops, I was about to say soul) center of the evening, but it is impossible, as in all Wooster Group productions, to disassociate her from the other performers. Here they include Suzzy Roche, looking like someone who never left the Electric Circus, as a snaggle- toothed Mephistopheles; gray-haired Roy Faudree as the Boy who visits Faustus and Ari Fliakos as Faustus's dog, who says nothing but ''thank you'' in a raspy, hung-over-sounding voice. Both Tanya Selvaratnam and Helen Eve Pickett play the Marguerite figure, who is given two separate names in Stein's text.
This fission of character is typical of the evening. In addition to telling the story of Faust according to Stein, ''House/Lights'' weaves in the plot of ''Olga's House of Shame,'' a 1964 cult film by Joseph Mawra. It's like a seedier, more sinister version of a Roger Corman movie, with buxom and studly jewel thieves inflicting all manner of sexual torture upon one another. (It also involves the initiation of a young woman into this ring of sadism, so there is a Faustian parallel of sorts.)
The live ensemble acts out the scenes from the movie that are concurrently being shown on the
video screens. Sometimes the simulcast images from the stage bleed into those of the film; at
other moments, snippets of other movies, from Busby Berkeley spectacles to Mel Brooks's
''Young Frankenstein.'' (The video collages are the astonishing work of Philip Bussmann.)
You'll have to trust me when I say that there is nothing random-feeling about this mixture of elements, which also feature danced segments that seem choreographed by a tornado but are actually the work of Trisha Brown and Ms. Pickett. (The music is by Hans Peter Kuhn.) The performers and the technical team, which includes the sound designers James (J .J.) Johnson and John Collins and the costume designer Elizabeth Jenyon, work as if they had all been generated by the same computer program. Everything in ''House/ Lights'' seems to ricochet and echo off everything else.
It also never loses sight of the idea of the increasing uncertainty of identity in the modern age, a theme that fascinated Stein, especially after she achieved worldwide fame with ''The Autobiograpy of Alice B. Toklas.'' The ways in which ''House/Lights'' carries out the confusion of flesh and technology, of self and the projected image, are often breathtaking.
One thinks, particularly, of Ms. Valk running a finger across her lips, while at the same time the mouth turns red on the black-and-white image of her face on the screens. There is also the moment when the physical gyrations of Ms. Valk and Mr. Faudree, acting out a sex scene from ''Olga's House of Shame,'' are caught (and utterly desexualized) in the overamplified sounds of cloth rubbing against cloth.
There is a splendid sequence in which Ms. Valk prepares a serpent for its big scene in the Faust play. The serpent is a microphone wearing a mask, with the voice of a boozed-out, aging stand- up comic (provided by Mr. Collins). Though the evening, which runs about 90 minutes, is intermissionless, it does adhere to Stein's given structure of five acts. The divisions are signaled by the image of a red curtain falling on each of the video screens.
In the past, the Wooster Group has mostly used its deconstructive tools on familiar classics, like O'Neill's ''Hairy Ape'' and ''Emperor Jones'' and Chekhov's ''Three Sisters.'' Frankly, the idea of this troupe's taking on Stein seemed to promise an evening of the obscure leading the obscure. This simply isn't the case.
Stein's reputation, of course, has never been universally solid. There are still many who regard her as the ultimate intellectual fraud. ''A cold, black suet pudding,'' was how Wyndham Lewis described her writing. ''All fat, without nerve.''
Similarly, accusations of arty, posturing pretentiousness have habitually dogged the Wooster Group. In asking us to listen anew to Stein, to something other than ''rose is a rose is a rose,'' this company illuminates what remains enduringly relevant in Stein's voice while confirming the troupe itself as part of an intellectual continuum that began in the age of Picasso. The world that ''House/ Lights'' portrays may be in atomistic shards, but there's a strangely comforting wholeness in this century-enfolding symmetry.
You'll have to trust me when I say that there is nothing random-feeling about this mixture of elements, which also feature danced segments that seem choreographed by a tornado but are actually the work of Trisha Brown and Ms. Pickett. (The music is by Hans Peter Kuhn.) The performers and the technical team, which includes the sound designers James (J .J.) Johnson and John Collins and the costume designer Elizabeth Jenyon, work as if they had all been generated by the same computer program. Everything in ''House/ Lights'' seems to ricochet and echo off everything else.
It also never loses sight of the idea of the increasing uncertainty of identity in the modern age, a theme that fascinated Stein, especially after she achieved worldwide fame with ''The Autobiograpy of Alice B. Toklas.'' The ways in which ''House/Lights'' carries out the confusion of flesh and technology, of self and the projected image, are often breathtaking.
One thinks, particularly, of Ms. Valk running a finger across her lips, while at the same time the mouth turns red on the black-and-white image of her face on the screens. There is also the moment when the physical gyrations of Ms. Valk and Mr. Faudree, acting out a sex scene from ''Olga's House of Shame,'' are caught (and utterly desexualized) in the overamplified sounds of cloth rubbing against cloth.
There is a splendid sequence in which Ms. Valk prepares a serpent for its big scene in the Faust play. The serpent is a microphone wearing a mask, with the voice of a boozed-out, aging stand- up comic (provided by Mr. Collins). Though the evening, which runs about 90 minutes, is intermissionless, it does adhere to Stein's given structure of five acts. The divisions are signaled by the image of a red curtain falling on each of the video screens.
In the past, the Wooster Group has mostly used its deconstructive tools on familiar classics, like O'Neill's ''Hairy Ape'' and ''Emperor Jones'' and Chekhov's ''Three Sisters.'' Frankly, the idea of this troupe's taking on Stein seemed to promise an evening of the obscure leading the obscure. This simply isn't the case.
Stein's reputation, of course, has never been universally solid. There are still many who regard her as the ultimate intellectual fraud. ''A cold, black suet pudding,'' was how Wyndham Lewis described her writing. ''All fat, without nerve.''
Similarly, accusations of arty, posturing pretentiousness have habitually dogged the Wooster Group. In asking us to listen anew to Stein, to something other than ''rose is a rose is a rose,'' this company illuminates what remains enduringly relevant in Stein's voice while confirming the troupe itself as part of an intellectual continuum that began in the age of Picasso. The world that ''House/ Lights'' portrays may be in atomistic shards, but there's a strangely comforting wholeness in this century-enfolding symmetry.
HOUSE/LIGHTS
A work by the Wooster Group based on Gertrude Stein's ''Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights.'' Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte; sound by James (J. J.) Johnson and John Collins; sets by Jim Findlay; video, Philip Bussmann; lighting by Jennifer Tipton; costumes by Elizabeth Jenyon; music by Hans Peter Kuhn; assistant to the director/stage manager, Clay Hapaz. Presented by the Wooster Group. At 33 Wooster Street, SoHo.
WITH: Kate Valk (Faustus/Elaine), Suzzy Roche (Mephistopheles/Olga), Roy Faudree (Boy/Nick), Ari Fliakos (Dog/Johnny), Tanya Selvaratnam (Christine/Nadja), Helen Eve Pickett (Susie/Ellie), Sheena See (Holly/ Jenny) and John Collins (Mr. Viper).
Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
February 19, 2002, Tuesday
THEATER REVIEW; Racine's Pale Queen, Struggling With Racket Sports
By BEN BRANTLEY
Her majesty is a royal train wreck. Oh, sure, she's kind of pretty in her pasty, anemic way. But she is as weak as she is pale.
Why, she can't dress herself, or feed herself, or even go to the bathroom without elaborate help. And she is no good at all at the games she has to play: politics, love, badminton (yes, badminton). This babe may be highborn, but she is also born to lose.
Her majesty is a royal train wreck. Oh, sure, she's kind of pretty in her pasty, anemic way. But she is as weak as she is pale.
Why, she can't dress herself, or feed herself, or even go to the bathroom without elaborate help. And she is no good at all at the games she has to play: politics, love, badminton (yes, badminton). This babe may be highborn, but she is also born to lose.
Phèdre, the tortured queen who gave lovesickness new meaning, has probably never looked sicker than she does in the Wooster Group's exhilarating dissection of Racine's tragedy, here retitled ''To You, the Birdie!,'' at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.
A work by the Wooster Group based on Gertrude Stein's ''Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights.'' Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte; sound by James (J. J.) Johnson and John Collins; sets by Jim Findlay; video, Philip Bussmann; lighting by Jennifer Tipton; costumes by Elizabeth Jenyon; music by Hans Peter Kuhn; assistant to the director/stage manager, Clay Hapaz. Presented by the Wooster Group. At 33 Wooster Street, SoHo.
WITH: Kate Valk (Faustus/Elaine), Suzzy Roche (Mephistopheles/Olga), Roy Faudree (Boy/Nick), Ari Fliakos (Dog/Johnny), Tanya Selvaratnam (Christine/Nadja), Helen Eve Pickett (Susie/Ellie), Sheena See (Holly/ Jenny) and John Collins (Mr. Viper).
Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
February 19, 2002, Tuesday
THEATER REVIEW; Racine's Pale Queen, Struggling With Racket Sports
By BEN BRANTLEY
Her majesty is a royal train wreck. Oh, sure, she's kind of pretty in her pasty, anemic way. But she is as weak as she is pale.
Why, she can't dress herself, or feed herself, or even go to the bathroom without elaborate help. And she is no good at all at the games she has to play: politics, love, badminton (yes, badminton). This babe may be highborn, but she is also born to lose.
Her majesty is a royal train wreck. Oh, sure, she's kind of pretty in her pasty, anemic way. But she is as weak as she is pale.
Why, she can't dress herself, or feed herself, or even go to the bathroom without elaborate help. And she is no good at all at the games she has to play: politics, love, badminton (yes, badminton). This babe may be highborn, but she is also born to lose.
Phèdre, the tortured queen who gave lovesickness new meaning, has probably never looked sicker than she does in the Wooster Group's exhilarating dissection of Racine's tragedy, here retitled ''To You, the Birdie!,'' at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.
True, when the legendary Rachel stormed through the part in Paris in the 1800's, she was
described as ''an awful, ghastly apparition'' perched ''on the verge of the grave.'' But Rachel's
Phèdre would probably come across as a strapping milkmaid if she had to stand next to Kate
Valk in the same role. It is unlikely, for example, that Rachel's Phèdre required the simulated
administering of enemas onstage.
Don't gag just yet. Elizabeth LeCompte, the Wooster Group's artistic director, and Ms. Valk, its
dazzlingly accomplished leading lady, have come up with an inspired diagnostic portrait of
Racine's most miserable heroine. At the same time, the very form of Racine's play and the
culture from which it emerged undergo serious exploratory surgery.
This being the Wooster Group, the surgical tools belong to both 21st-century technology and traditions as old as Kabuki. This isn't just postmodern riffing, though. Ms. LeCompte and company (including the Frances McDormand and Willem Dafoe) have taken ''Phèdre'' apart the better to see it as a whole. And they make you think about a stately classic in entirely new and surprisingly logical ways.
Scholars have long debated whether Phèdre is the victim of cruel destiny or sinful lust. ''To You, the Birdie!'' suggests that she suffers just as much from centuries of dynastic inbreeding and the cosseting that royalty was afforded in the age of Racine.
This Phèdre is not used to doing things for herself, any more than Louis XIV was. Both neurasthenic and pneumatic in her corseted top, she has a retinue to dress her, to walk her, to feed her (in this version, with a giant eyedropper). Even her warrior husband, the mighty Theseus (the mighty Mr. Dafoe), is sort of cranked into position by massaging minions.
In this context, Phèdre's helplessness at expressing her love to her stepson, Hippolytos (Ari Fliakos), assumes new dimensions. And her pragmatic nurse, Oenone (Ms. McDormand), is of necessity more manipulative than ever.
''Birdie'' hews more closely to its source than most Wooster productions do. (The simplified, condensed adaptation is by Paul Schmidt.) Then again, badminton, to my knowledge, has never before figured prominently in ''Phèdre.''
The game here becomes a multifaceted metaphor: for the formality of the play, the ritualized nature of courtly society and that big, nobody-wins sport called love. (''To you, the birdie'' is a literal translation of a French phrase spoken during badminton games.)
A severely elegant Venus (played by both Suzzy Roche and Fiona Leaning) holds vigil on the sidelines, making calls (''fault,'' ''let'') in a cold, mechanically amplified voice, which also lets the audience know that doom is around the corner.
How the characters play badminton becomes a prophecy of how they will play out their lives. Hippolytos is too easily rattled and keeps throwing down his racket. Theseus spikes the birdie with an angry, military hand. Poor Phèdre can't even lift the racket.
This being the Wooster Group, the surgical tools belong to both 21st-century technology and traditions as old as Kabuki. This isn't just postmodern riffing, though. Ms. LeCompte and company (including the Frances McDormand and Willem Dafoe) have taken ''Phèdre'' apart the better to see it as a whole. And they make you think about a stately classic in entirely new and surprisingly logical ways.
Scholars have long debated whether Phèdre is the victim of cruel destiny or sinful lust. ''To You, the Birdie!'' suggests that she suffers just as much from centuries of dynastic inbreeding and the cosseting that royalty was afforded in the age of Racine.
This Phèdre is not used to doing things for herself, any more than Louis XIV was. Both neurasthenic and pneumatic in her corseted top, she has a retinue to dress her, to walk her, to feed her (in this version, with a giant eyedropper). Even her warrior husband, the mighty Theseus (the mighty Mr. Dafoe), is sort of cranked into position by massaging minions.
In this context, Phèdre's helplessness at expressing her love to her stepson, Hippolytos (Ari Fliakos), assumes new dimensions. And her pragmatic nurse, Oenone (Ms. McDormand), is of necessity more manipulative than ever.
''Birdie'' hews more closely to its source than most Wooster productions do. (The simplified, condensed adaptation is by Paul Schmidt.) Then again, badminton, to my knowledge, has never before figured prominently in ''Phèdre.''
The game here becomes a multifaceted metaphor: for the formality of the play, the ritualized nature of courtly society and that big, nobody-wins sport called love. (''To you, the birdie'' is a literal translation of a French phrase spoken during badminton games.)
A severely elegant Venus (played by both Suzzy Roche and Fiona Leaning) holds vigil on the sidelines, making calls (''fault,'' ''let'') in a cold, mechanically amplified voice, which also lets the audience know that doom is around the corner.
How the characters play badminton becomes a prophecy of how they will play out their lives. Hippolytos is too easily rattled and keeps throwing down his racket. Theseus spikes the birdie with an angry, military hand. Poor Phèdre can't even lift the racket.
If the badminton conceit were all there was, ''Birdie'' would be too precious by half. Mercifully,
Ms. LeCompte, her performers and her wizardly technicians make it clear that there is much
more on their minds.
The displacing use of technology, a staple of Wooster productions, here suggests everything from the self-alienating effects of passion to the ways Baroque-era France looked at classical Greece. And, not incidentally, the ways the 21st century looks at both.
Scott Shepherd, who plays Hippolytos's best friend, doubles as a reader, whose voice (both live and recorded) articulates Phèdre's tormented thoughts in deadpan style. Jim Findlay's set is segmented by transparent, mobile walls, further divided by Jennifer Tipton's lighting.
Videotape is shown on a screen that covers the lower parts of the performers' bodies, dividing characters into flesh and image. Human torsos appear to morph into marble torsos. The sound effects include literal-minded bird songs as the badminton birdies fly and mocking Ronettes-style love ditties as Phèdre ponders her fate.
The overall effect is of a gleeful latter-day answer to Baroque trompe l'oeil, and it feeds into the pervasive theme of intersections and collisions: of different time periods and cultures; of aggrandizing myth and diminishing physical reality; of public persons and private passions.
No one, of course, can be very private in the world of ''Birdie,'' with all those courtiers hanging around. These assistants, you should know, spend a lot of time helping Phèdre evacuate her bowels. Potty wheelchairs are always at the ready, as are enema sacks with long, snakelike tubes.
These elements, presented with ritualized matter-of-factness, have a definite purpose. In Racine's original text, Phèdre is forever talking about the disastrous effects of illicit passion on her innards. ''Birdie'' takes her at her word.
The game and talented Ms. McDormand, an Oscar winner for ''Fargo'' and a relative newcomer to the Wooster Group, hasn't quite caught on to the house style of dissociation. You can sense her struggling to repress the urge to act naturally. But Mr. Fliakos and Mr. Shepherd, as young specimens of neo-Classical manhood, already have the troupe's uniquely artificial rhythms down pat.
It's especially fun to watch Mr. Fliakos's Hippolytos as he tentatively strikes the Olympian poses of classical statues. In delightful contrast, there is Mr. Dafoe's Theseus, who takes the stage posturing like Mr. Universe and calling out, in a deflatingly nasal voice, ''Look at this!'' Mr. Dafoe, a founding member of the Wooster Group, is clearly a master of the stylistically mixed message.
So, of course, is Ms. Valk, who gives a performance of astonishing precision and intelligence. This Phèdre is a fluttery, drunken moth, so addled in her lust that she doesn't always know where to focus it.
The displacing use of technology, a staple of Wooster productions, here suggests everything from the self-alienating effects of passion to the ways Baroque-era France looked at classical Greece. And, not incidentally, the ways the 21st century looks at both.
Scott Shepherd, who plays Hippolytos's best friend, doubles as a reader, whose voice (both live and recorded) articulates Phèdre's tormented thoughts in deadpan style. Jim Findlay's set is segmented by transparent, mobile walls, further divided by Jennifer Tipton's lighting.
Videotape is shown on a screen that covers the lower parts of the performers' bodies, dividing characters into flesh and image. Human torsos appear to morph into marble torsos. The sound effects include literal-minded bird songs as the badminton birdies fly and mocking Ronettes-style love ditties as Phèdre ponders her fate.
The overall effect is of a gleeful latter-day answer to Baroque trompe l'oeil, and it feeds into the pervasive theme of intersections and collisions: of different time periods and cultures; of aggrandizing myth and diminishing physical reality; of public persons and private passions.
No one, of course, can be very private in the world of ''Birdie,'' with all those courtiers hanging around. These assistants, you should know, spend a lot of time helping Phèdre evacuate her bowels. Potty wheelchairs are always at the ready, as are enema sacks with long, snakelike tubes.
These elements, presented with ritualized matter-of-factness, have a definite purpose. In Racine's original text, Phèdre is forever talking about the disastrous effects of illicit passion on her innards. ''Birdie'' takes her at her word.
The game and talented Ms. McDormand, an Oscar winner for ''Fargo'' and a relative newcomer to the Wooster Group, hasn't quite caught on to the house style of dissociation. You can sense her struggling to repress the urge to act naturally. But Mr. Fliakos and Mr. Shepherd, as young specimens of neo-Classical manhood, already have the troupe's uniquely artificial rhythms down pat.
It's especially fun to watch Mr. Fliakos's Hippolytos as he tentatively strikes the Olympian poses of classical statues. In delightful contrast, there is Mr. Dafoe's Theseus, who takes the stage posturing like Mr. Universe and calling out, in a deflatingly nasal voice, ''Look at this!'' Mr. Dafoe, a founding member of the Wooster Group, is clearly a master of the stylistically mixed message.
So, of course, is Ms. Valk, who gives a performance of astonishing precision and intelligence. This Phèdre is a fluttery, drunken moth, so addled in her lust that she doesn't always know where to focus it.
She finds an authoritative voice only in yelling orders, usually for something like a new piece of
clothing to try on. This pathetic creature has been so overbred she's barely human anymore. As
Ms. Valk plays her, she is a walking -- or rather stumbling -- justification for the French
Revolution.
TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (PHÈDRE)
The Wooster Group's production, based on Paul Schmidt's translation of Racine's ''Phèdre.'' Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte; sets by Jim Findlay; sound by John Collins, Geoff Abbas and Jim Dawson; video by Phillip Bussmann; lighting by Jennifer Tipton; original music tracks by David Linton; costumes by the Wooster Group with Elizabeth Jenyon; assistant costumes/video, Tara Webb; assistant director, Richard Kimmel; technical director, Iver Findlay. At St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street, corner of Dock Street, Brooklyn.
WITH: Frances McDormand (Oenone), Kate Valk (Phèdre), Willem Dafoe (Theseus), Ari Fliakos (Hippolytos), Scott Shepherd (Theramenes/Reader), Suzzy Roche/Fiona Leaning (Venus/Referee), Koosil-ja Hwang (Marker 7) and Dominique Bousquet (Marker 4).
TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (PHÈDRE)
The Wooster Group's production, based on Paul Schmidt's translation of Racine's ''Phèdre.'' Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte; sets by Jim Findlay; sound by John Collins, Geoff Abbas and Jim Dawson; video by Phillip Bussmann; lighting by Jennifer Tipton; original music tracks by David Linton; costumes by the Wooster Group with Elizabeth Jenyon; assistant costumes/video, Tara Webb; assistant director, Richard Kimmel; technical director, Iver Findlay. At St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street, corner of Dock Street, Brooklyn.
WITH: Frances McDormand (Oenone), Kate Valk (Phèdre), Willem Dafoe (Theseus), Ari Fliakos (Hippolytos), Scott Shepherd (Theramenes/Reader), Suzzy Roche/Fiona Leaning (Venus/Referee), Koosil-ja Hwang (Marker 7) and Dominique Bousquet (Marker 4).
