Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Mikhail Baryshnikov fails to register as Nijinsky in Robert Wilson’s LETTER TO A MAN

• By drediman
• October 28, 2016
• No Comments

Mikhail Baryshnikov in “Letter to a Man” at BAM Harvey

What a shame. There was so much promise in the concept of having Mikhail Baryshnikov – one of the great movers of our time – play the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky as he descends into madness. And who better to depict the intensity of sensation (whether it be insanity or otherwise) in a performance than that auteur Robert Wilson. Unfortunately, what may look good on paper – matching Mr. Wilson’s sensibility with the diaries of Nijinsky – doesn’t always translate to the stage, as was evident by the performance I attended at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week.

Mr. Wilson’s aesthetic is instantly recognizable, but here it works against the piece. Whereas his previous outing with Mr. Baryshnikov, the vaudevillian The Old Woman (co-starring Willem Dafoe, which also played BAM), was energized by Mr. Wilson’s surreal, otherworldly stage pictures, his contributions (more like hijacking, really) here actually overwhelmed the shadings of Nijinsky’s inner life. Perhaps a lighter, more nuanced approach would have been beneficial to give the piece more shape. But as we all know, that’s not within Robert Wilson’s purview.

You can’t fault Mr. Baryshnikov, who at 68 moves with eternal grace and presence. Despite the production’s miscues, one can still appreciate the genius of the man. He manages to salvage the confounding mush (I, for one, could not make heads or tails of Nijinsky’s descent into madness) that is Letter to a Man, one of the center pieces, unfortunately, of this year’s edition of BAM’s Next Wave Festival. But that’s why we love Next Wave – the unpredictability of it all.

SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED

LETTER TO A MAN
Performance Art/Dance
BAM Harvey Theater
1 hour, 10 minutes (without an intermission)
Through October 30