There’s nothing like a classic tale of
incest and infidelity to keep audiences on the edge of their
seats.
Based on Paul Schmidt’s translation of Racine’s "Phedre,"
and starring Frances McDormand ("Fargo," "Almost
Famous") and Willem Dafoe ("Shadow of the Vampire,"
"Platoon"), "To You, The Birdie (Phedre)"
is about the tormented, secret crush that Queen Phedre (Kate
Valk) has on her stepson Hippolytos (Ari Fliakos).
"To You, The Birdie" is being presented by The Wooster
Group, a 25-year-old collaboration of artists based in Manhattan,
in the slick, new 250-seat performance space – a former spice-milling
factory – operated by Arts at St. Ann’s at 38 Water St. in DUMBO.
Brooklyn should welcome such a spectacular play with open arms.
While Hippolytos is similarly lovelorn for Phedre, neither has
confessed their feelings to the other. Phedre confides in her
handmaiden Oenone (McDormand) and Hippolytos confides in his
buddy Theramenes (Scott Shepherd). Phedre is in all-out agony
over her unrequited love, and just as the two lovers seem about
to consummate their love, King Theseus (Dafoe) returns from his
long voyage.
Both Phedre and Hippolytos are consumed with guilt over their
adulterous – but unrequited – lust. Phedre, on the advice of
Oenone, tells Theseus she’s been raped by his son, so he’ll send
him away. Instead, Theseus calls on the gods to destroy his son.
When the truth comes to light, the dead are piling up. This is,
after all, French playwright Jean Baptiste Racine’s (1639-1699)
1677 version of the Greek tragedy.
While the well-known plot may sound straightforward, it’s the
telling of the story that is refreshingly new, baffling and yet
beguiling. Director Elizabeth LeCompte incorporates clever sound
effects, video and choreographed badminton games into the story
in the vein of the Wooster Group’s usual, avant-garde style.
While Phedre, played by Valk in a chillingly accomplished performance,
is obviously tormented and overwrought, her lines are delivered
into a microphone by Shepherd in a deadpan, falsetto voice. His
voiceover serves to make each of her thoughts sound comically
irrational and high-strung.
Phedre’s love sickness is underscored by all of the medical apparatuses
employed by her courtiers to aid her. There are wheelchairs,
intravenous bags and tubing. Constant attention is being drawn
to Phedre’s buttocks and whatever could be coming out into the
tubing, the mimed enemas or the bedpans.
The director continues to poke fun at the tragedy of these very
fallible humans by using a video monitor to show a face looking
down at the action. At the opening of the play, a monitor displays
the genitalia under the kilts of the two Greek men while they
are talking of love.
For those of you attending the play just to see the movie stars
– Academy Award winner McDormand and multiple Oscar-nominee Dafoe
– you won’t be disappointed. Both have plenty of stage time and
turn in great performances: McDormand is the pragmatic, scheming
friend offering stern advice to her helpless, sickly Queen Phedre,
and Dafoe is the thunder-footed King, stripped to the loin cloth.
Though his face shows the anguish of a disappointed father and
betrayed husband, his hand literally searches for answers in
his servant’s blouse.
Neither actor is a stranger to cutting-edge theater. Dafoe is
a founding member of The Wooster Group and McDormand starred
opposite Billy Crudup in the Blue Light Theater Group’s probing,
hours and hours-long 1998 production of "Oedipus."
John Collins, Geoff Abbas and Jim Dawson all deserve kudos for
the incredible, cartoonish sound effects, including canned laughter.
As Theseus returns to his kingdom, each footstep resounds with
thunder a la Godzilla movies. The staging, by Jim Findlay, quite
ingeniously adapts to the warehouse space. It is a mobile landscape
of aluminum track, rolling palm trees, sliding Plexiglas panels
and omnipresent video monitors.
The producers quote Racine as saying of his work, "The mere
thought of sin is as horrible as sin itself." Though there
is much anguished posturing in the play, there are director LeCompte’s
madcap moments of lightness when the actors pick up racquets
and play badminton. A sexy but mechanical female voice declares
"FAULT!" when a tweeting birdie hits the stage. The
novel use of badminton underscores each character’s failings
– Hippolytos’ youthful impatience and Phedre’s lack of strength
to even hold a racquet.
Ultimately Valk’s portrayal of Queen Phedre is not a sympathetic
one, but a display of the ineffectuality and decadence of royalty.
Her emotional excesses cry out for Oenone’s reasoned advice,
but even reason meets a fatal end when it comes to love.
So much is unearthed in the Wooster Group’s searing portrayal
that the audience goes home pondering Greek myth, 17th-century
France and contemporary, American materialism. And perhaps one
becomes just the slightest bit afraid of love – and monarchies.
The Wooster Group’s production of "To
You, The Birdie (Phedre)" continues through March 9, Tuesdays
through Saturdays at 8 pm and Saturdays at 2 pm, at St. Ann’s
Warehouse, 38 Water St. at Dock Street in DUMBO. General admission
tickets are $25-$30. For reservations, call (212) 966-3651. For
more information, visit www.thewoostergroup.org
on the Web. The Rice Bar, in the St. Ann’s lobby, is open for
food and drink before and after the show. For more information
about Arts at St. Ann’s, call (718) 858-2424.
