The Wooster Group is “Wondrous” in Brooklyn

“Worlds have collided. Let the fireworks begin.” That’s how Ben Brantley of the New York Times begins his rave review in the of the Wooster Group’s newest work, La Didone, on view until April 26 at St. Ann’s Warehouse, in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

“When it comes to striking sparks from crashing art forms and time zones, nobody beats the Wooster Group at the top of its game," continues Brantley. "The mind-bending pyrotechnics — visual, aural and intellectual — never stop in La Didone, a work that crosses a little-known 17th-century opera (about Dido and Aeneas) with a little-known 1965 movie (about extraterrestrial body snatchers).”

Sound interesting?  It is.  Audiences for La Didone have been packing into St. Ann’s seemingly infinitely flexible performance space, sitting rapt, and then cheering madly and texting all their friends.  Since 1975, under the direction of Elizabeth LeCompte, the Wooster Group—originally described as an avant-garde theater group (back when the “advance guard” had yet to become the norm that it is today)—has been creating and presenting some of the most original theatrical spectacles on the planet, combining text/acting, movement/dance, sound/music, and an ever-evolving vocabulary of sets/visuals.   Yes, the troupe’s work, developed over long periods of improvisation and exploration, is highly intelligent, even smarty-pants; it’s also hugely entertaining and easily watchable on several levels—which is why the Wooster Group has evolved beyond cult favorite into a popular cultural icon.

In the past LeCompte and her troupe (which has included Spalding Gray, Willem Dafoe, Ron Vawter, and many more) have drawn into their creative process some of the most important texts of the past few centuries: O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, Racine’s Phèdre,  Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Chekov’s Three Sisters, and Flaubert’s Temptation of St. Anthony, to name a few.  This time they’ve combined what they call “two Italian artifacts” and distilled a delicious tension/seduction between them:  a little-performed (but quite beautiful!) 1641 opera by Francesco Cavalli (bits of which are performance live and quite seriously) and a cheezoid 1965 film about space zombies, entitled Terrore Nello Spazio (released in the U.S. as Planet of the Vampires). 

Believe it or not, in the hands of the Wooster Group this combination works, and the artistic conventions the two artifacts represent have more in common than you might think!  “Timelines double up on themselves in this wondrous production,” says Brantley, and “…divisions between high and low culture are released into the ether, as ornately sung Baroque arias melt into prairie-flat B-movie dialogue.”

Now, you don’t see Ben Brantley calling shows “wondrous” every day.  We recommend you get yourself over to Dumbo, if you can, and check out the fireworks for yourself.

PS:  It seems like the ‘60s are in the air.  At least three other dance/performance artists I know have told me they’re developing works influenced by vintage films or images from that era.  What do these artists find so fascinating, anyway?  Were the ‘60s the last time—until today—that the mental foreground we call The Future was rosy enough to influence The Present in a big way?

Florestan