This weekend I caught two plays that at first didn’t seem to have much in common, but in hindsight are very much about different takes on spirituality and religion.
The first was Rescue Me (A Postmodern Classic with Snacks) by Michi Barall and produced by Ma Yi Theatre Company. It’s a remix of Iphigenia at Tauris, a Greek play I’m not familiar with. Luckily, the production anticipates this lack of knowledge and provides a wealth of information in the program and an interval with snacks and a short Q&A session with a Classics scholar (it changes each night). But the text itself also does a great deal of explaining the story through metatheatricality and cartoons of off-stage characters on a stack of televisions downstage. Some of the technical wizardry is off-putting, some of it is clever and it occasionally moves the story forward. I felt that way about many aspects of the script as well. There were elements of true humor and wit, but also uses of fairly tired cliches (the one that bothered me the most-while still making me laugh slightly-was portraying Thaos, the ruler of Tauris, as Elvis– a trope that is put to good use in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, but rarely works elsewhere). The acting was, on the whole, quite strong, but my favorite part of the play was an ironic pas de deux between Orestes and Pylades, two men who have ventured to Athena’s temple to return her statue to Greece but have discovered that only one will live to return home. I found it to be the most contemporary and touching part of a play that was filled with a lot of contemporary references and images.
My other theatrical adventure this weekend was A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick by Kia Corthron. I’ve seen a good number of shows at Playwrights Horizons this season and this was by far the messiest. I usually applaud theatrical messiness, because I believe it shows an ability to take artistic risks and challenge the audience, but the messiness that I encountered in Crick seemed more dramaturgical than risky. The play follows an African man studying ecology and theology in the United States. In the first act he’s living with a woman who has taken him in after a church trip to Ethiopia and her high school aged daughter. Her son and husband drowned during Hurricane Katrina and she suffers from visions and hallucinations. The second act takes place seven years later when he returns to America, disappointed in his inability to accomplish what he set out to. But the play takes a circuitous route through religious fervor and expectations and baptism and reunited love and dream sequences. The political nature of the play also leans more towards preaching facts to the audience rather than creating dramatic situations between the characters, which I suppose is the burden of writing a character who is a preacher and an ecologist. The use of water as a metaphor is powerful, but isn’t enough to sustain a long play. Again the acting and design are very strong, but the play falls flat a little in its desire to tie too many story lines together with too many facts about water consumption in the world.
I believe I’m also being harsher on these plays now than I was while watching them. I sat through both plays and truly appreciated both of them. It’s only after dissecting them with other people who have seen them that I’ve refined my opinions. Both of them were solid pieces of work with very good elements within them, but the final product fell ever so flat.
Sunday I’m seeing Annie Baker’s new play at Rattlestick, which I’m quite excited about and Monday is the NyLon Fusion benefit, hosted by Paul Haggis and featuring Wynton Marsalis, which I have to say I’m a little more excited about (no offense to Ms Baker, whose work I really like). I’ve also been reading some good plays in anticipation of my next turn writing Play of the Week at the Book Shop. It’s quite a fierce competition amongst the staff to see whose play sells the best and I’m hoping for a dark horse victory. Will be sure to link to my review when it’s posted online.
