THE HANGOVER REPORT – The Wooster Group’s THE B-SIDE still conjures ghosts of the past

Eric Berryman in the Wooster Group' production of "The B-Side" at St. Ann's Warehouse.

Eric Berryman in the Wooster Group’s production of “The B-Side” at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to catch the Wooster Group’s The B-Side: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons” at St. Ann’s Warehouse. The staging is a remounting of a production that had previously played at the intimate Performance Garage, the influential avant-garde theater company’s home base in Soho. The work was born from creator Eric Berryman’s obsession with Bruce Jackson’s aptly titled 1964 documentary album “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons”. In essence, The B-Side is a distilled track-by-track regurgitation of the album, whereby Mr. Berryman summons the subjects’ voices via an in-ear speaker.

In the much larger St. Ann’s Warehouse, the piece unsurprisingly registers differently than it did at the claustrophobic Performance Garage. Unfortunately, the hour-long piece now comes across somewhat less than a fully satisfying theatrical and more like the fascinating but slight experiment that it always was. In Soho, The B-Side was a palpable spectral experience. Indeed, I had the overwhelming sense that the ghosts of the album’s prison farm inmates had entered the theater as Mr. Berryman uncannily channeled work songs, blues, spirituals, preaching, and toasts. At St. Ann’s, that’s still the case, but their presence is fainter and less tangible.

Nevertheless, the show continues to be performed with eerie deadpan intensity by Mr. Berryman and his pair of authentically world-weary backup singers, Philip Moore and Jasper McGruder. Indeed, it’s still a haunting thrill to see Mr. Berryman metaphorically disappear and time-travel/transform before our very eyes. As she did with Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album Interpretation – the show that directly influenced the creation of The B-Side – Kate Valk has directed the production with a gentle minimalism that invites the audience to approach the material, as opposed to the other way around.

RECOMMENDED

 

THE B-SIDE: “NEGRO FOLKLORE FROM TEXAS STATE PRISONS”
Off-Broadway, Musical
The Wooster Group at St. Ann’s Warehouse
1 hour (without an intermission)
Through March 31

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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