Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Beguiled by the avant-garde: Off-Off-Broadway’s MY ONLINESS and THIS AND THAT

• By drediman
• September 19, 2022
• No Comments

Speaking from experience, few things can be as deliciously unpredictable as attending Off-Off-Broadway performances. Here are my thoughts on a couple of current avant-garde offerings that had me tantalized by their uncanny ability to keep me off balance.

MY ONLINESS
New Ohio Theatre
Through September 24

Down at the New Ohio Theatre in Greenwich Village, I attended One-Eighth Theater and IRT Theater’s co-production of Robert Lyons’s My Onliness (RECOMMENDED). Adapted and directed by Daniel Irizarry as a sort of chaotic theatrical hybrid — elements of cabaret, circus, opera, and experimental theater are freely thrown onto the proverbial wall — the ASL-friendly concoction tells the story of a psychologically unstable king who spends the duration of the show trying to woo the people’s petitioner, all the while ignoring the plight of his court writer. Even if the dramatic thrust of the piece is only vaguely compelling, I nonetheless found the production’s off-the-charts energy level and giddy enthusiasm infectious and invigorating and its suggestion of the pandemonium running rampant just beneath society’s surface telling. Particular attention must be paid to Mr. Irizarry, who himself plays the aforementioned king, leading a game company with a hugely impressive physical, no-holds-barred performance that makes one emphatically appreciate the uniquely visceral and anything-can-happen qualities of live theater.

THIS AND THAT
The Bushwick Starr / The Chocolate Factory Theatre
Through September 24

Then there’s The Institute of Useless Activity’s production of This and That (RECOMMENDED) which in a much more subdued manner beguiled me just the same. Co-presented by The Bushwick Starr and The Chocolate Factory Theater (the production is being staged at the latter’s venue in Long Island City), the hourlong show uses decidedly low tech production values to ambitiously recap the history of the universe thus far. The wordless work is the brainchild of the duo of Steven Wendt and Phil Soltanoff, who respectively use their obsessive visual and sonic talents to bring the unlikely endeavor to life. The poetic two-part meditation begins with a depiction of nothing less than the creation of the universe. Although this portion of the show registers somewhat coldly, the analog technology used to conjure the event is sufficiently abstract so as to suggest its incomprehensibility, at least from our perspective. The second part of the evening segues into a series of fluidly unfolding shadow puppet vignettes that encapsulate the human experience. Despite its manual nature (literally), I found the artistry of Mr. Wendy’s empathetic puppet work to be surprisingly sophisticated and deeply soulful, which is in fascinatingly stark contrast to the impenetrable mysteries presented by the preceding depiction of the cosmic/primordial.