8/12/2019 HOUSE_LIGHTS - Review - Theater - New York Times
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HEATER REVIEW A Case For Cubism And Deals With Devils
BEN BRANTLEYished: February 3, 1999, Wednesday
rude Stein was right, after all. So it would seem, in any case,
from the testimonyided in the bedazzling new theater piece from the
Wooster Group, ''House/Lights.''
multimedia collage, inspired by Stein's opera libretto of 1938,
''Dr. Faustus LightsLights,'' makes nothing less than a case for
Cubism, which Stein famously advocatedpatron of painters and
practiced as a writer, as the dominant sensibility of thisury. It's
the perfect show to see in 1999, finding in the prophecies of
artists of
des ago the disjunctive present in which we now live.
d the groans, please, and the dismissive rolling of the eyes.
While the intellectual ambitions ofuse/Lights,'' now in an
open-ended run at the Performing Garage in SoHo, may be arrogantly
grand, therething dry or academic in the experience of the show. As
a mind-scrambling entertainment, there's nothinglike it around; it
turns disorientation into a primary sensual pleasure, even as it
raises terrifying thoughts
ut the deeply mixed blessings of technological progress.
ugh the use of the latest tools of that technology, the Wooster
Group has assembled a portrait, bothured and fluid, of a world in
which any set sense of chronology, culture or i dentity can no
longer be takenranted.
's the Faustian bargain that Stein deals with, in her typically
elliptical way, in her original text, in whichFaust figure is the
inventor of artificial light, altering forever the natural order of
time. Under the incisive,tacularly resourceful direction of
Elizabeth LeCompte, that text acquires at least another 60 years'
worth ofs of displacement.
performance is j uxtaposed with what emerges from an assortment
of television screens that record,
nter and transform what is happening onstage until you're no
longer sure which image has the greatestty. Voices, too, are
mechanically distorted and fragmented. What is the source of what
you're hearing?ce this sort ofaural confusion is now an unwanted
commonplace in overmiked Broadway musicals, it iscially gratifying
to find the Wooster Group making sardonic use of the same
phenomenon.) Stein wrotemovies would change forever the very way we
look at things. Ms. LeCompte makes i t clear that this wasthe
beginning. Jim Findlay's metal grid of a set features, in addition
to phalanxes of video screens andrted electric bulbs (the uncanny
lighting is by Jennifer Tipton), a laptop computer at center stage.
And invening's master of ceremonies, the magnifi cent Kate Valk, we
have a creature of astonishing artificiality, aoiced 1930's-style
beauty with marcelled hair and bee-stung lips who might be a
digitally manufacturedposite of movie stars. She's the ultimate
screen siren, happiest in two dimensions.
e is something unnervingly languorous about Ms. Valk's presence,
even as she adj usts microphones, angleself for yet another
small-screen close-up and goes through some frenetically
choreographed pantomimes.suggests a centuries-old vampire
prostitute, tired of turning tricks but still amazingly proficient
at doing so.may not look like Faustus, the role the program says
she i s playing, but she is clearly someone (or is itething?) who
has sold her soul, or lost it, a long time ago.
to Ms. Valk that the principal duties of reading Stei n's text
fall, including narrative, song lyrics and stagections. (In reading
''Dr. Faustus,'' it's not always clear which of these elements is
which.) Her rushed,
hanical, Betty Boop-ish voice, swathed in synthesizer-induced
reverberations, oddly matches the neutralityStein aimed for in her
cadenced, repetitious prose. (Qui ck sample: ''You fool you devil
how can you know,can you tell me so, if I am the only who can know
what I know then no devil can tell me so. . . .'')
Valk is clearly the (oops, I was about to say soul) center of
the evening, but it is impossible, as in all Woosterup productions,
to disassociate her from the other performers. Here they include
Suzzy Roche, looking likeeone who never left the Electric Circus,
as a snaggle-toothed Mephistopheles; gray-haired Roy Faudree asBoy
who visits Faustus and Ari Fliakos as Faustus's dog, who says
nothing but ''thank you'' in a raspy, hung--sounding voice. Both
Tanya Selvaratnam and Helen Eve Pickett play the Marguerite figure,
who is givenseparate names in Stein's text.
fission of character is typical of the evening. In addi tion to
telling the story of Faust according to Stein,use/Lights'' weaves
in the plot of ''Olga's House of Shame,'' a 1964 cult film by
Joseph Mawra. It's like aier, more sinister version of a Roger
Corman movie, with buxom and studly jewel thieves inflicting allner
of sexual torture upon one another. (It also involves the
initiation of a young woman into this ring ofsm, so there is a
Faustian parallel of sorts.)
live ensemble acts out the scenes from the movie that are
concurrently being shown on the video screens.etimes the simulcast
images from the stage bleed into those of the film; at other
moments, snippets of
' '' ''
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8/12/2019 HOUSE_LIGHTS - Review - Theater - New York Times
2/2
, .stonishing work of Philip Bussmann.)
ll have to trust me when I say that there is nothing
random-feeling about this mixture of elements, whichfeature danced
segments that seem choreographed by a tornado but are actually the
work of Trisha BrownMs. Pickett. (The music is by Hans Peter Kuhn.)
The performers and the technical team, which includesound designers
James (J .J.) Johnson and John Collins and the costume designer
Elizabeth Jenyon, workthey had all been generated by the same
computer program. Everything in ''House/ Lights'' seems to
chet and echo off everything else.
so never loses sight of the idea of the increasing uncertainty
of identity in the modern age, a theme thatnated Stein, especially
after she achieved worldwide fame with ''The Autobiograpy of Alice
B. Toklas.'' The in which ''House/Lights'' carries out the
confusion of flesh and technology, of self and the projected
ge, are often breathtaking.
thinks, particularly, of Ms. Valk running a finger across her
lips, while at the same time the mouth turnson the black-and-white
image of her face on the screens. There is also the moment when the
physicaltions of Ms. Valk and Mr. Faudree, acting out a sex scene
from ' 'Olga's House of Shame,'' are caught (andrly desexualized)
in the overamplified sounds of cloth rubbing against cloth.
e is a splendid sequence in which Ms. Valk prepares a serpent
for its big scene in the Faust play. Theent is a microphone wearing
a mask, with the voice of a boozed-out, aging stand-up comic
(provided by Mr.ns). Though the evening, which runs about 90
minutes, is intermissionless, it does adhere to Stein's givencture
of five acts. The divisions are signaled by the image of a red
curtain falling on each of the videoens.
e past, the Wooster Group has mostly used its deconstructive
tools on familiar classics, like O'Neill's ''Hairy and '' Emperor
Jones'' and Chekhov's ''Three Sisters.'' Frankly, the idea of this
troupe's taking on Stein
med to promise an evening of the obscure leading the obscure.
This simply isn't the case.
n's reputation, of course, has never been universally solid.
There are still many who regard her as themate intellectual fraud.
''A cold, black suet pudding,'' was how Wyndham Lewis described her
writing. ''Allwithout nerve.''
larly, accusations of arty, posturing pretentiousness have
habitually dogged the Wooster Group. In askinglisten anew to Stein,
to something other than ' 'rose is a rose is a rose,'' this company
illuminates what
ains enduringly relevant in Stein's voice while confirming the
troupe itself as part of an intellectualnuum that began in the age
of Picasso. The world that ''House/ Lights'' portrays may be in
atomisticds, but there's a strangely comforting wholeness in this
century-enfolding symmetry.
USE/LIGHTS
ork by the Wooster Group based on Gertrude Stein's ''Doctor
Faustus Lights the Lights.'' Directed byabeth LeCompte; sound by
James ( J. J.) Johnson and John Collins; sets by Jim Findlay;
video, Philipmann; lighting by Jennifer Tipton; costumes by
Elizabeth Jenyon; music by Hans Peter Kuhn; assistant to
director/stage manager, Clay Hapaz. Presented by the Wooster
Group. At 33 Wooster Street, SoHo.
H: Kate Valk (Faustus/Elaine), Suzzy Roche
(Mephistopheles/Olga), Roy Faudree (Boy/Nick), Ari
Fliakosg/Johnny), Tanya Selvaratnam (Christine/Nadja), Helen Eve
Pickett (Susie/Ellie), Sheena See (Holly/ny) and John Collins (Mr.
Viper).
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