theater for the adventurous soul

The Lily's Revenge

Monday, November 2

We are living in an era where so-called reality TV seems to have stifled audiences' abilities to tell the difference between a manufactured experience and an actual one; where the proliferation of tiny electronic devices enables each of us not only to tune out the environment we're actually in but also to create a virtual environment of our own choosing to replace it. In such a world, what could be more subversive than a work of theatre that demands nothing more than that we engage with its (a)liveness for almost five of our precious hours? And what could be more exhilarating, affirming, and joyous than to report that such an event fully delivers on its promises: That those five hours sail by like a happy and satisfying dream, leaving us refreshed and invigorated and ready to navigate our crazy socially networked society with just a bit more alertness and awareness.

Such is the miracle of Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge. This new production—epic really is the only word that does it justice—is intelligent, endlessly surprising, and above all spectacularly entertaining. It inspires hyperbolic pronouncements like "the most important event of the theater season" or "the essential must-see event of the year," and then thumbs its nose at such portentous preposterousness (or bares its bottom; it's that kind of cheeky show, after all).

This thing is BIG. It's nearly five hours long, including three intermissions; it spans five acts, each directed by a different artist in singular style; there are fifty artists listed in the program (not counting the dozens of others who appear only on video in the background). It's about Pretty Much Everything, including gay marriage, equality, tolerance, ecology, the futility of longing, the wastefulness of nostalgia, the attractiveness of cliche, the way that familiarity breeds both contempt and its opposite, the artifice and the profundity of art, and a great deal more that I'm just not thinking of at this particular moment. Most fundamentally, it's about itself, which is to say that it's about several dozen strangers sharing a night full of unexpected moments together and discovering that the experience of sharing may be the most special takeaway of all.

I want to tell you something about the narrative, which is significant and complicated though not at all difficult to follow. It involves a Lily who decides that she wants to marry a bride (flowers are apparently all feminine in this play). The Great Longing, who is personified as an old-fashioned theatre curtain, is furious that the Lily wants to subvert the traditional story of Bride and Groom in this fashion; the rule seems to be that only a man may wed a bride, and so the Lily determines to become a man. Many obstacles stand in her path, but after journeys to a spiritual garden and to a factory farm in Ecuador, the Lily seems bound not just to get her wish but to get (as promised by the show's title) her revenge. I don't want to give too much away, but I will tell you that, in the manner of many fairy tales, the Great Longing is revealed to have no clothes at all, and the answer to what ails us turns out to be Love.

The Pope figures in this somehow, as does Susan Stewart, author of On Longing.

Do not be afraid of the size of The Lily's Revenge. You'll spend about 3-3/4 hours inside the theatre and another hour roaming around HERE Arts Center during the three intermissions. There's plenty of stimulating stuff to do during the breaks, including eating and drinking at the cafe, playing voyeur or party animal in the Discussion Disco, and enjoying musical numbers performed by various of the alarmingly talented performers in the show. (The performances during these "recesses" are staged by HERE's artistic director Kristin Marting.)

 Each of the five acts of the play is different from the others. The first, directed by The Talking Band's Paul Zimet, is a wildly off-kilter fairy tale presented in the manner of a golden age musical comedy that has somehow been broken. The second is directed by Rachel Chavkin of The TEAM and is a poetic flower garden with a raw drag aesthetic (it is entirely in verse, though different kinds of verse). Next is an act choreographed by Faye Driscoll that is essentially a dream ballet, albeit one with dialog and strange interludes and a climactic musical number that is a striptease (it is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the show that this set piece, though reminiscent of "classic" burlesque a la Sally Rand or Gypsy Rose Lee, is performed by a man). This is followed by a short Act IV on video (directed by Aaron Rhyne); and then a finale, staged by David Drake, that somehow brings all of the foregoing together without ever feeling like it's repeating itself.

I was captivated by the costumes, which are the work of the dazzlingly imaginative Machine Dazzle; by the music (composed by Rachelle Garniez and played by an on-stage band comprised of Matt Ray, Derek Nievergelt, Stefan Schatz, and Jon Natchez); by the spare, stylized, very effective sets designed by Nick Vaughan; by the glittery makeup created by Derrick Little; by the off-kilter but delightful choreography in Act I devised by Julie Atlas Muz. The ensemble is wondrous, and I will mention a few of the most memorable—World Famous *BOB* as the "Card Girl," our mistress of ceremonies; James Tigger! Ferguson as the Great Longing; Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Lady Rizo) as the Bride Diety; Miss Bianca Leigh as Time, the Wind, and the Stepmother; and Darlinda Just Darlinda as Bride Love—while tipping my hat to all.

At the center, of course, is the incomparable Taylor Mac, who here proves himself to be not just a radiant starry presence on stage (the kind of performer you simply cannot look away from) but also a theatrical auteur/force of nature of  Wellesian ambition and potency. It's not just Mac's intellect or talent or even audacity that makes The Lily's Revenge the magical stupendous piece of theatre that it is: it's the over-the-top heart, full of unwavering faith in himself, dozens of disparate collaborators, and roomfuls of audience members he's never even met, that they will make The Lily's Revenge possible every night. For possibility is finally what it's all about...

HERE Arts Center - Mainstage; 10/29 - 11/22
$35
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Brecht on Brecht

Monday, November 2

John Strasberg's Accidental Repertory Theater is performing Brecht on Brecht in their intimate space on Eighth Avenue, and the result is unlike any public presentation of theatre I've ever witnessed. With six of its actors propped on high bar chairs behind music stands (and the seventh, who serves essentially as the "conductor" of the show, stationed nearby), each in a casual variant of rehearsal/audition garb, and with the audience seated just a few feet away in two rows of folding chairs (and Strasberg himself in the back row, at the performance I attended; and the stage manager at a desk a few yards to the right)—well the feeling overall is of a recital among close friends. The actors intermingle with each other and with people they know in the audience before the show and during intermission. Strasberg began the proceedings with a charming chat about his company and their goals, delivered slyly behind a comic nose/eyeglasses/moustache mask (it was, after all, Halloween on the night I attended).

Brecht on Brecht, which is a rather fluid collage of material by Bertolt Brecht, originally compiled and presented by his friend George Tabori, is itself billed as "an improvisation," which makes it perfect for this loose, engaging style of performance. In a manner that can only be called "Brechtian," Anne Pasquale intones the title of each piece while a slide bearing the title is projected on the rear wall of the theatre. The actors then perform the piece—sometimes from their chairs, and often reading from their scripts (Pasquale introduces an improv element by randomly assigning bits to particular actors), and other times in more traditional/presentational style, moving toward the center of the space and occasionally donning a costume accessory (a cap, an apron) and interacting with a few props and bits of furniture to set the scene. At its best (which is quite frequently), the effect is of a spontaneous and organic discovery of the material by the performer.

I enjoyed—and was constantly stimulated and energized by—being able to engage with the actors in this show; our sheer proximity envelops us in the process of creation, for there's just not room in this space for a fourth wall, even if one were desired. Every one of the performers has at least one moment to shine, exploring and working with their assigned material. Audrey Lavine turns the famous song "Pirate Jenny" into a fascinating character study. Judy Krause is affecting in the brief but memorable song "Mother Beimlein."Virginia Armitage and Louis Vuolo team up for the bitterly comic "Abortion is Illegal." Robert Rowe gives us a pensive monologue on hypocrisy and expedience from Life of Galileo, and Pasquale has a long segment from The Jewish Wife in the second act. Finally, Jerry Marsini delivers two prose pieces, "Playwright's Song" and "Questions from a Worker," with a frank simplicity that underscores just how fundamental Brecht's themes are.

In the places where the actors sing—without amplification, of course, accompanied by Ross Patterson on piano—we are reminded particularly of the possibilities of live performance.

Brecht on Brecht seems originally to have been intended by Tabori to help "rehabilitate" Brecht's reputation in the West—to demonstrate that this great playwright was not just a Marxist who retired to East Germany but was also a great humanist, an opponent of fascism and a proponent of freedom and individuality. The material here is mostly unfamiliar; there are just two songs from Threepenny Opera and another from Happy End ("Surabaya Johnny)—these plus Mother Courage's song are the items you're most likely to have encountered elsewhere. So the real gift of this production is to surprise us with Brecht's writing. Songs like "Abortion is Illegal" (a cabaret number from the 1920s/30s) are sadly and startlingly still relevant. The opening piece, "Lost Glory of the Metropolis New York," written in 1930, is similarly resonant:

They raised gigantic buildings up with incomparable waste
Of the best human material. Completely openly, before all the world
They pulled out of their workers what was
Shot into them with shotguns in the coal shafts and threw their used-up bones and
Exploited muscles on the street with
Good-natured laughter.
But with casual recognition they reported
The same rude implacability of the worker on strike
On a Homeric scale.

Brecht on Brecht's first act, especially, teems with this kind of prescient, socially conscious material.

The show is not without its missteps. The Jewish Wife segment in Act II goes on longer than it needs to. And while I understand the impulse to use new lyrics for some of the familiar songs ("Pirate Jenny" and "Barbara Song" from Threepenny are both newly translated here by H. Clark Kee), I found myself distracted by hearing both these new words and, in my head, Eric Bentley's, more or less simultaneously.

This is not a show for everyone: if the distancing that a proscenium arch (real or metaphorical) provides between you as an audience member and the talent on stage matters to you, then you may not enjoy Brecht on Brecht. But this is a rich and rewarding event that allows you to experience the discoveries and, as Strasberg dubs them, "accidents" that spark the most interesting art. And it will also bring into focus the breadth and depth of the work of a playwright who, despite his fame and notoriety, is not perhaps as well understood by modern audiences as he deserves to be.

John Strasberg Studios; 10/29 - 11/21
$15
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