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When you jump into OffOff Broadway, you find yourself diving through strata of density and investment.
All four OffOff shows I saw this week looked incredible, all handsomely set, many into unconventional spaces.
There the audience sits on couches in the carpeted chancel, under banners (Peace for Vieques Now!)
and amid other El Puente paintings and puppets.
The play isnt really a play.
Between these participatory episodes, Borinsky shades in a very spare narrative.
In the script, the people are represented as numbers, which makes them seem even more like abstractions.
Here, for instance, is one microscene.
1
You seem depressed.
I can sit with you.
Of course I want
We can talk, too.
I dont really know what I would say.
Like the lovestruck Song of Songs in the Bible, BorinskysA Song of Songsfloats in and out of dream.
Ill be your dog, at your heel, you dont have to do anything but feed me.
Borinskys writing seems to be in a kind of transition into weightlessness.
Its just … floating … fragments.
And look, if you open to the knocking,A Song of Songswill be able to touch you.
For my part, I sat clenched and reluctant on my couch.
John J. Caswell Jr.sMan Cavedoes look amazing.
Thanks to lighting designer Lucrecia Briceno, the images inside glow.
Caswells picture show, though, doesnt quite work as it should.
His scenario ought to be full of tension; its certainly full of rage.
Imaculada (Annie Henk) is the housekeeper for an Arizona senator.
You cant just barge into a theater and start flashing the lights blue and red.
Nothing, not even an otherworldly growl, can stop Rosemary from holding forth on leftist talking points.
Imaculada tries to offer her some of her bosss cash, and Rosemary rebuffs the Republicans money.
Anti-abortion anti-immigrant anti-clean-energy buy-offs redoubled on the backs of crooked investments.
Just look at Petersons voting record.
They shouldnt even be able to buy stock, she says.
Perhaps its this schematic quality that holds the performers back they rarely register fear, let alone urgency.
Too late, Caswell turns his attention to Imaculada, the more interesting character.
To organize all this into a play of ratcheting tension, though, is staggeringly difficult.
Riggs gorgeous set hints at whats wrong it shouldnt justlooklike a film, it shouldbea film.
Puzzled by what felt like a rare misfire from Page 73, I started reading the script.
It certainly reads like a screenplay, and a hell of a one at that.
Just the idea of Imaculadas tiptoeing descent, seen from her perspective, gave me chills.
Whose darkness is down there?
We see her go up and down those stairs a dozen times inMan Caveand dont think anything of it.
But if we were watching that stair from a camera over her shoulder we might never sleep again.
Theres much more poetry in the environment the designers have built, which really is a marvel.
FromA Song of Songs,at El Puentes Williamsburg Leadership Center.
FromHart Island,at Judson Memorial Church.
FromMan Cave,at the Connelly Theater.
(Director Christopher McElroen adapted the text for his company, The American Vicarious.)
Its an ART/New York venue, but its usually used for readings, rehearsals and concerts.
I will be eager to compare the twoDebates how will they be different?
In this case, Bougere (exhausted but on fire) makes the production unmissable.
He can see for miles and miles; he knows exactly what our polite response bodes for his future.
