Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – The current productions of THE B-SIDE and ILLYRIA intimately bridge past and present, in ways only theater can

• By drediman
• November 2, 2017
• No Comments

History is in vogue again. The hit musical Hamilton has made it a sexy pursuit to critically engage with history by taking a hard look at past events and bringing them forward through time and space to the present (how did we get from there to here?). And of the forms of entertainment out there, none is more “present” than the performing arts. It is inherently of the moment – there is no more up-to-date, immediate genre of entertainment. Both performers and audience members bring their current selves to the meeting, and together move forward. Unless you aren’t paying attention, there is no temporal mis-match when it comes to live performance, which is why the communal act of examining the past in the theater can be such a potent experience. Currently, two Off-Broadway productions are conjuring the past in ways that are fascinating and intensely theatrical.

Eric Berryman in the Wooster Group’s “THE B-SIDE” at the Performance Garage.

THE B-SIDE: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons, A Record Album Interpretation (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) from the avant-garde minds of the folks at the Wooster Group is a transfixing experiment. As with the company’s acclaimed Early Shaker Spirituals, THE B-SIDE reconstructs vocals from an historically and culturally remote album (both are unassumingly and deliberately directed by Late Valk), in this case Bruce Jackson’s 1965 recording of chain gang songs and random musings recorded at Texas penitentiaries. In action, the act of mimicking a concurrently playing album is unnerving and makes for surprisingly mesmerizing theater. Three performers – Eric Berryman, Philip Moore, and Jackson McGruder – have the task of non-satirically channeling, down to each inflection, the tracks from the album, and they succeed brilliantly. The result is an eerily shamanistic ritual that in effect raises the dead, even as we are keenly aware of the simple methods used. There is no artifice here, which makes the bridge to another time that much more concrete.

The company of Richard Nelson’s “Illyria” at the Public Theater.

Richard Nelson’s Illyria (RECOMMENDED), a new play about the early days of Joe Papp’s legacy currently playing, unsurprisingly, at the Public Theatre, takes an altogether different approach. Mr. Nelson’s Apple Family Plays and The Gabriels, two sensitive, interrelated family sagas that have been tremendous artistic successes at the Public in recent years, have engaged “then” present moments with an intimacy and objectivity that I found earth-shaking (those of you who saw these productions know that they were anything but) and unprecedented. Illyria seeks to create that same realness, but this time in relation to the past. Theoretically, the play is comparatively at a disadvantage, given that the playwright here references a past set of circumstances – a derivative reality that he or we know less personally than our own. Nonetheless, Mr. Nelson’s latest play, which he also directs, is captivating on its own terms, especially if you are interested in theater lore. It’s also beautifully and respectfully acted by an ensemble of fine actors.

THE B-SIDE: “NEGRO FOLKLORE FROME TEXAS STATE PRISONS”, A RECORD ALBUM INTERPRETATION
Off-Broadway, Play
The Wooster Group
1 hour (without an intermission)
Through November 19

ILLYRIA
Off-Broadway, Play
The Public Theater
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 10