Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – They’ve still got it: Downtown theater artists RIZO and KAREN FINLEY urgently return to live performance

• By drediman
• May 8, 2023
• No Comments

Over the course of the past week, I had the opportunity to catch the return to live performance of two revered downtown artists, both of whom have come out of the woodwork with an urgency I found captivating. In short, they’ve still got it; they’ve been much missed.

RIZO: PRIZMATISM
Joe’s Pub
Closed

For three performances last week, the artist formerly known as Lady Rizo rocked Joe’s Pub with her latest show Prizmatism (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). Now known simply as Rizo, the songstress makes a welcome return to live performance since pre-pandemic times with her signature performance style – an intoxicating mix of rock and roll alongside performance art and burlesque antics – happily still intact. Obviously much has changed since she last took to the stage, which has imbued her act with a more self-aware quality than her previous all-out outrageousness. Which is not to say she’s dialed back her willingness to “go there”. On the contrary, this current iteration feels rawer and more authentic and less frankly vaudevillian than previous ones. Still though, no one holds court quite like (Lady) Rizo, who over the course of the evening raucously performed songs both new and familiar when not captivating the audience with her cabaret-inspired banter.

KAREN FINLEY: COVID VORTEX ANXIETY OPERA KITTY KALEIDOSCOPE DISCO
Laurie Beechman Theatre
Saturdays through June 24

Then there’s Karen Finley, who is current playing Saturdays at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in a piece elaborately entitled Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco(RECOMMENDED). Less overtly the kind of physical daredevil she once was, the performance art legend at this juncture in her fabled career has turned her intensity towards the written word. In her latest piece, she provides audiences a pointedly observant overview of the Covid pandemic. Fever dream in nature and packed with her Finley-isms (the projections that accompany her presentation are priceless), the work calls to mind a more abstract version of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Plays for the Plague Year, which just wrapped up performances at Joe’s Pub. Less conventional theater and more a ritualistic act of communal cleansing, the works attempts on its own terms to make sense of those disorienting and traumatic days. Apparently the work has struck a chord – Finley’s residency at the Beechman has just been extended through June 24.