Spring into New York: A Brief Arts Review While for most tourists, the downtown area is the big draw, visitors and natives alike would be wise to check out what's going on in New York's art world this season, arguably one of the most varied and engaging in a long while. Here's a brief overview of some of the highlights (and low lights) of The Big Apple in bloom. Theatre: Metamorphoses If you’re looking for an evening of watching young, hot, dripping wet actors illuminate fundamental truths about sex, love and death while moving you to weep and laugh then Metamorphoses, which is now playing at Circle in the Square Theatre, is the ticket for you. If not, you may just want to check your pulse. A huge smash off-Broadway hit, the show has now made its way uptown without losing any of its homespun eloquence. The brainchild of Mary Zimmerman, of Chicago’s Lookinglass Theatre Company, Metamorphoses, on the surface, sounds like it could easily be part of the all-too-popular trend of dressing up old stories in new, and oftentimes, trendy robes. Indeed, this tactic is nothing new; Ovid, whose tales of Greek myth serve as the source material for the play, was in fact a Roman. In the opening moments of the play, you can almost taste the fear that this play, complete with a giant raked pool for a set (yes, that’s right, you might get wet), is pure gimmick; an acting exercise for students. The play did begin life as an exercise for Zimmerman’s students at Northwestern, but what has resulted is no exercise, but rather, a masterstroke. The myths of Ovid are stories we all know and Zimmerman with her passionate ensemble cast has found a way to retell the stories, or rather share these stories with their audience in a way that is fresh, invigorating and above all honest to the hearts of these tales. These are the stories of Midas, Orpheus and Eurydice, of the woman who loved Cupid and the son of The Sun. All of these stories deal in some way with transformations, and there are plenty of them, people are constantly turning into birds or trees or gold, but there are also transformations of a different kind happening here as well. A bride stands on the shore of the sea, waiting for her husbands’ return, knowing she is already a widow, but refusing to believe. A daughter scorns all love and then finds it in a place she would have never imagined, her own father. Death looms large here, but so does healing and love. Much of the healing also comes in the form of humor. When Midas asks a god for the power to turn everything he touches to gold, the god replies “That’s a very very bad idea.” To single out any single member of such a tightly knit ensemble would be to miss the point. Switching roles at a moment’s notice, these actors work not so much like a well-oiled machine, but rather as a group of friends who have discovered something amazing and are excitedly relaying it to you. Zimmerman’s pool becomes an aquatic campfire for us to gather around and share in the experience of being human. Dive in. Metamorphoses is now playing at Circle in the Square Theatre (1633 Broadway @ 50th St.). Tickets are $30-$75 and may be purchased by phoning Tele-Charge at 212.239.6200 Theatre: Necessary Targets It seems to me that Eve Ensler’s work dares you to criticize it by being so topical. With The Vagina Monologues, she took us into the lives of real women, documenting their stories, ostensibly about how they felt about “down there”, but with an undeniable skew towards stories of domestic violence and rape. Now, with Necessary Targets, she has given us the heart-wrenching tale of two American women trying to help a group of war-torn Bosnian refugee women cope with…well the fact that they’re war-torn Bosnian refugee women. Perhaps for her next play, Ms. Ensler will pull two innocent, female bunnies out of her theatrical hat and have a group of angry marauding men rip them limb from limb. Yes, the show is really that bad. It’s not that the issues that Ms. Ensler addresses are trite, in fact the themes she tries to tease out in this show are important and timely ones: victimization, globalization’s dark side, and yes, even the effects of war and terrorism on the female sex. Ms. Ensler, at the very least, has the courage to tackle the big issues; however she refuses to face these issues honestly, choosing instead to force feed us her own didactic political agenda. What is worse is that she knows it and doesn’t seem to care much. The two Americans who come to Bosnia are set up early to be ideological rivals; J.S (Shirley Knight), with her matching designer luggage looks like she just left Sarah Jessica Parker on the couch back in New York, while young flack-jacketed Melissa (Catherine Kellner) is a self described ‘grief trauma counselor’ who also plans on writing a play, I mean, book about refugee women. J.S’s soft, downright motherly style clashes with Melissa’s “we pull in, we pull out, we move on” attitude. Melissa’s insistence that the therapy sessions be recorded is supposed to be the stuff of much conflict, but it never adds up. Her character is so one-dimensional, her motivations so murky and her arguments so transparent that even Ensler has her take off from the stage for most of the play, only bringing her back occasionally, presumably to torture the audience. There are also some Bosnian refugee women. They form an ensemble straight out of Sarejevo Central Casting and their oftentimes heart rending stories are the only real meat in this play. It’s a shame they’re such stereotypes, since such a fine ensemble cast like this clearly deserves much better. As in The Vagina Monologues, men are in short supply in this modern day version of The Trojan Women. Men are only spoken of by the women, and then only in reference to their pillaging and raping. There is a flicker of hope when one woman speaks of her husband, who is with her in the camp and how she misses the man he was. The next day, she predictably appears with a bruised lip and a black eye. This kind of thing is what makes this show so infuriating. Ms. Ensler turns EVERY man into a villain and by extension EVERY woman into a victim. It makes for good drama, as every damsel tied to the train tracks with mustachioed villain looking on knows, but it seems patently dishonest and sexist. In the wake of September 11th we’ve seen widowed women become a powerful lobbying force and we’ve seen our male leaders weep. Ms. Ensler’s view that it is always men vs. women seems sophomoric. It’s true that women around the world have been and still are treated inhumanly, but Ms. Ensler has created a piece of theatre that insidiously implies that women are hardwired to weep and collapse under pressure. This isn’t consciousness-raising, its propaganda and the cause is not women’s rights but rather, Eve Ensler. Necessary Targets is now playing at Variety Arts Theatre (110 3rd Ave @ 14th St..). Tickets are $20-$60 and may be purchased by phoning Tele-Charge at 212.239.6200

posted by Japhy at 3/18/2002 12:21:00 AM || #