Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Milo Rau’s FIVE EASY PIECES is a provocative experiment that pushes the envelope

• By drediman
• March 10, 2019
• No Comments

The young company of Milo Rau’s “Five Easy Pieces” at NYU Skirball. Photo by Phile Deprez.

For three performances only this weekend, Milo Rau’s Five Easy Pieces, which has been created in collaboration with the International Institute of Political Murder and Ghent’s CAMPO Arts Centre, played NYU Skirball. Mr. Rau has been notoriously touted as one of the world’s most controversial directors. Indeed, the unsetting premise of this particular show lives up to that reputation. In Five Easy Pieces, Mr. Rau has a group of seven children re-enact the true story of Belgian child murderer and rapist Marc Dutroux.

By juxtaposing actual children onto such a horrific narrative, their inherent vulnerability and limited capacity to process the gravity of the events become profoundly evident. Additionally, the roles played by the children are also played by a video-projected adult shadow cast, which visually hits the director’s point home even further. Although Five Easy Pieces doesn’t work completely as a cohesive piece of drama, I think it most certainly pushes forward avant-garde theater in a provocative direction.

Some may think that Mr. Rau is exploiting these children for his live “experiment” – and to some extent, he is – but it’s all done in a rather objective, non-threatening manner. That the play is performed in Flemish (with English supertitles) also further distances us from the proceedings onstage, which perhaps dampens, for better or worse, the disturbing aspects of Five Easy Pieces for American audiences. As for the kids, they’re uniformly excellent – rah of them is thoroughly self-possessed and professional.

RECOMMENDED

FIVE EASY PIECES
Off-Broadway, Play
NYU Skirball
1 hour, 30 minutes
Closed