When a local theater company manages to
produce a show that attracts big enough audiences to warrant
an extended run, it should be a cause for celebration. It certainly
leads to high expectations.
But after sitting (and standing) through 45 minutes of GAle GAtes
et al’s "So Long Ago I Can’t Remember," I found myself
turning to my husband and saying, "Let’s go," for the
first time in my reviewing career.
It wasn’t just that this modern interpretation of Dante’s "Divine
Comedy" was disturbing, vulgar or painful to the eye and
ear – all of which it was – but rather that it was loosely thrown
together and impossible to hear or understand.
"So Long Ago" is directed by Michael Counts, co-founder
and executive director of GAle GAtes. Counts is a designer and
installation artist whose past works have included "Frontier
and the Kings of Prussia," a landscape installation and
performance on 30 acres of the 400-acre Haas farm in Devon, Penn.;
"The Making of a Mountain," a five-block installation
in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and "90 Degrees
from an Equinox? Where Are We? And Where Are We Going?,"
a six-day, 12-hour performance-installation on the 65,000-square-foot
51st floor of 55 Water St. in Manhattan.
"So Long Ago" has a book by Kevin Oakes, who is currently
developing his new play, "The Vomit Talk of Ghosts;"
and music by Joseph Diebes, who has collaborated with Counts
on other major productions including "Field of Mars,"
"wine-blue-open-water" and "1839."
It is being staged in a renovated 40,000-square-foot DUMBO warehouse
at 37 Main St., where GAle GAtes et al. moved in July 1997.
The work makes full use of this sprawling space with a series
of 13 installations. The audience is guided along these installations
until what the New York Times’ Neil Genzlinger calls "the
crowning moment" when everyone exits the building "to
a great skyline view across the East River" which for him
is a "sort of urban heaven on Earth."
Suffice it to say the best part of the play was when it ended.
But unfortunately, I never made it to the end. Perhaps if the
pre-recorded dialogue had not reduced the spoken word to irritating
noise, or if the scraps of dialogue I did manage to hear had
made any sense, or if the idea of being herded along with the
crowd hadn’t reminded me of the 1963 World’s Fair and its tribute
to American Industry, I might have stayed.
I reached my breaking point after sitting through a tableau of
a boat filled with ghoulish and apparently unhappy people beginning
their descent to hell, a loud and vulgar scene at a restaurant,
and a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers routine from hell. I was standing
and listening to a long dialogue between Nazis speaking German,
a language I do not speak with any real mastery, when I decided
I’d had it.
Some critics have lauded "So Long Ago." Perhaps it
all depends on your definition of theater or how you think that
definition can be changed or whether you even believe theater
can be defined.
"So Long Ago" might have succeeded if it had been presented
as a kind of avant-garde silent film – all music, action and
expression – with no words to intrude and confuse. As theater
it was neither this nor that. To quote a playwright who knew
what he was doing, it was "much ado about nothing."
"So Long Ago I Can’t Remember"
runs through June 30, Tuesday through Saturday at 8:30 pm at
GAle GAtes et al (37 Main St. in DUMBO). Tickets are $20 on Tuesdays
and Wednesdays, $25 Thursdays through Saturdays. Not suitable
for children. For reservations, call (718) 522-4597.
