THE HANGOVER REPORT – THE GREAT TAMER, Dimitris Papaioannou’s surreal, slow-burning visual symphony, mesmerizes at BAM

A scene from Dimitris Papaioannou's "The Great Tamer", an offering at BAM's Next Wave Festival, at the Howard Gilman Opera House. Photo by Max Gordon.

A scene from Dimitris Papaioannou’s “The Great Tamer”, an offering at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, at the Howard Gilman Opera House. Photo by Max Gordon.

Last night at the Howard Gilman Opera House, the highly regarded Greek auteur Dimitris Papaioannou made his BAM debut with The Great Tamer, another smashing offering at this year’s Next Wave Festival. The hard-to-categorized piece can be best described as experimental physical theater, neither wholly dance nor traditional, narrative-driven theater. There is no discrete plot, per se, to speak of. However, what The Great Tamer attempts to do, no less, is to poetically encapsulate human existence and civilization, and it succeeds quite brilliantly in doing so.

In short, the show is mesmerizing. It’s amazing that I haven’t come across this visionary artist’s work previously (although he did mastermind the Athens Olympics opening ceremony in 2004). Set to recurring, sightly distorted strains of Johann Strauss II’s “The Blue Danube”, The Great Tamer is basically comprised of repeating, glacially modulating physical and visual motifs, which collectively create a tapestry of evolving patterns that suggest the seeming randomness/aimlessness and inconsequence of human life and civilization. In the process, however, exquisite beauty – as exemplified by the frequent appearance of the naked human body, as well as scraps of artifacts that are left behind – and banality exist side-by-side in a surreal, slow-burning symphony.

Ironically, the wordless The Great Tamer calls to mind two immortal Shakespearean phrases about the human condition – “What a piece of of work is man!”; as well as the notion that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” – both of which Mr. Papaioannou gorgeously if coldly realizes purely through exquisitely-wrought movement and striking stage pictures. In the director’s existential, occasionally grotesque world, nothing is what it seems. His steady stream of bewitching illusions (e.g., dismembered limbs, arrows that double vegetation) are made possible by his extraordinary company, whose level of precision, artistry, and trust are truly astonishing.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

THE GREAT TAMER
Physical Theater
BAM Next Wave Festival / Howard Gilman Opera House
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through November 17

Categories: Dance, Off-Broadway, Theater

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