VIEWPOINTS – Dabbling in some experimental theater, for better or worse

You never know what you’re going to get when you dabble in experimental theater. Indeed, this was the case with two avant-garde productions I had both the fortune and misfortune of recently attending.

IMG_5172Gob Squad’s endearing and bittersweet Before Your Very Eyes (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) at the Public had me captivated the moment I stepped in Martinson Hall. In their latest creation, the UK and Berlin-based group, which has been quietly raising its international profile over the last few years, has assembled a group of precocious kids and directed them to enact how their lives pan out until their last breath – all within a span of approximately an hour. The genius here is to show that the process has already started. By using footage of these youths two years ago, we the audience see how already these lives have morphed “before our very eyes”. Being exposed to this footage makes it that much easier to take the next step of suspending disbelief and peering into the crystal ball of performance (indeed, the set has the kids enclosed in a glass box). It’s a disorienting feeling to watch these lives in fast forward, but an important and bittersweet reminder that time is fleeting and life ever so strange and precious.

IMG_5236If Gob Squad exemplifies the transcendental potential of experimental theater with their latest show, the Wooster Group, who have always been wildly erratic (I adored their last show, the austere but riveting Early Shaker Spirituals), highlights the sub-genre’s frequent tendency for nonsensical pretentiousness with their current fall offering at The Performing Garage, an unfortunate deconstruction of Harold Pinter’s The Room (NOT RECOMMENDED). The production’s detached air – the cast seems to be sleepwalking through the play – mutes any semblance of menace and tension that’s so key in performing Pinter plays. The result is an experience that’s both frustratingly numbing and alienating. And even with a running time of under an hour (The Room is typically staged as one half of a Pinter double bill), I was senselessly bored throughout.

 

BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES
Off-Broadway, Play
Gob Squad at The Public Theater
1 hour, 10 minutes (without an intermission)
Through November 29

THE ROOM
Off-Broadway, Play
The Wooster Group at The Performing Garage
50 minutes (without an intermission)
Through November 21

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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