Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Streaming Diary: Breslin & Foley’s CIRCLE JERK, Claudia Rankine’s NOVEMBER, and Sarah Kane’s CRAVE

• By drediman
• November 6, 2020
• No Comments

This week, I found myself escaping Election Day anxiety by streaming a couple of plays online. Here are my thoughts on them.

CIRCLE JERK
Fake Friends

For hilarious but provocative escapism, I don’t think I could have done better than Fake Friends’ made-for-the-Internet production of Circle Jerk (RECOMMENDED) by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley (who also direct, alongside Rory Pelsue). Described as “a queer comedy about white gay supremacy”, how can you expect anything less than a giddy satire? Indeed, inspired by the ridiculous iconic works of playwright Charles Ludlam, the play takes contemporary tropes (i.e., cancel culture, White Supremacy, gay stereotypes), chaotically mashes them, and hopes for the best. Luckily, the play’s escalating lunacy is inspired; I particularly found the clever but not-so-subtle musical theater references side-splitting. And despite being made for the Internet (elaborately captured using multiple cameras), the coiled, madcap energy of live performance is very much in evidence. Kudos also to the cast of three, who strike comic gold. In addition to Mr. Breslin and Mr. Folely, actress Cat Rodríguez sensationally and skillfully play an array of outrageous characters, all the while thoroughly embracing and sustaining the production’s manic pacing.

NOVEMBER
The Shed

Before COVID-19 started dictating our lives in mid-March, Claudia Rankine’s new play Help had just started preview performances at the Shed. The work is inspired by Ms. Rankine’s deliberately pointed, real life conversations with white men in so-called “transitional” spaces (e.g., airports). Unfortunately, in light of the ensuing pandemic, the production, which featured staging by exciting director Taibi Magar, was prematurely put to a halt. Happily, the creative team, in collaboration with filmmaker Phililip Youmans, was able to re-conceive the play into a film. Renamed November (RECOMMENDED), the hourlong film continues to maintain – at its nexus – the stage production, which uses five wonderful black actresses to deliver Ms. Rankine’s monologue. Mr. Youmans augments these deceptively genial but penetrating performances with cinematic interludes that depict Black life in New York City, bringing texture to the film. If anything, the urgency and relevance of Ms. Rankine’s candid reckoning with White Supremacy and institutionalized racism have only increased with the onset of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the proximity of the film’s release to the presidential election.

CRAVE
Chichester Festival Theatre

Watching a Sarah Kane play is one of the most treacherous and unnerving experiences in all of contemporary theater. As a playwright, the late Ms. Kane specialized in staring at humanity’s capacity for destruction and despair with unflinching steadfastness, almost to the point of fetishizing the darkness that lies within us. Among her plays, Crave (RECOMMENDED) – which premiered in 1998, less than a year before her untimely suicide in 1999 at the age of only 28 – strikes me as particularly appropriate for these pandemic days, given that its four unnamed characters remain in isolation throughout its unnerving 50 minutes. Although they engage in (simultaneous) conversation, it’s not clear to whom they are speaking to or in what context. Thematically, one gathers that adultery, incest, loneliness, and suicide are among the struggles that are eating away at them. The only constant is the inconsolable wail that emanates from the stage. The stylish staging I caught this past week was a live-stream of the current production at the well-regarded Chichester Festival Theatre in England. Although the work’s raw poetry was on relatively clear display – thanks largely to the cast’s uniformly brave, fine performances – I almost feel that a simple Zoom-style “gallery” view could convey the play’s intensity and intimacy more effectively.