{"id":115,"date":"2011-08-06T15:27:02","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T19:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=115"},"modified":"2011-08-06T15:27:02","modified_gmt":"2011-08-06T19:27:02","slug":"to-hell-and-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2011\/08\/to-hell-and-back\/","title":{"rendered":"To Hell and Back"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Admetus (Molly Hickok) laments Alkestis (Tymberly Canale) Photo: Cherylynn Tsushima<\/p><\/div>\n

To be and not to be.\u00a0 That is a different question. It hovers above Big Dance Theater\u2019s The Supernatural Wife<\/em>, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar\u2019s absorbing re-envisioning of the myth behind Euripedes\u2019 Alkestis<\/em>. Already seen in Europe and appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music\u2019 Next Wave Festival in November, the work\u2019s U.S. premiere took place in Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s Doris Duke Studio Theater from July 27 through 31. As is always the case with Big Dance Theater productions, The Supernatural Wife <\/em>bounces apparently dissimilar texts and images off one another in surprising and illuminating ways. Remember Plan B<\/em> (2004), which set Richard Nixon\u2019s private Oval Office tapes and other material against accounts of the attempts to civilize the famous \u201cWild Child,\u201d Kaspar Hauser, in 19th<\/sup>-century Germany?<\/p>\n

The Supernatural Wife<\/em> weaves fewer disparate strands than previous Parson-Lazar pieces but makes them shine brilliantly and disquietingly. Bits of Euripedes\u2019s text (Anne Carson\u2019s contemporary translation in her Grief Lessons<\/em>) are preceded by words adapted from the movie His Girl Friday<\/em>, a comedy in which a reprieve from execution anchors the plot. <\/em>Classical antiquity and noble words collide with today\u2019s vernacular quirks and media-drenched existence.<\/p>\n

The wife in question is Alkestis. For her husband, King Admetus, winning her over many suitors is just one of several boons arranged for him by Apollo, who temporarily served as Ademetus\u2019s herdsman\u2014a punishment imposed by the gods. The final favor forms the crux of\u00a0 Euripedes\u2019 play. Admetus falls ill and wishes he didn\u2019t have to die young. Apollo tricks the Fates to gain a reprieve, but there\u2019s a catch: someone else has to die in Admetus\u2019s stead. Friends, servants, aged parents all refuse him. Not lovely Alkestis<\/em>.\u00a0 She is now both alive and dead, since there\u2019s no undoing the bargain. Admetus belatedly wishes he could die; without her, he is dead to life.<\/p>\n

Herakles arrives at the gate, on his way to one of the twelve labors he has been ordered to perform. Admetus, famed for his hospitality, offers him food and lodging, hiding his grief and the funeral preparations by implying that a foreign visitor has died. Herakles carouses, as is his wont, but is horrified when he discovers the truth. Off he goes to Hades to do battle for Alkestis. Returning with a heavily veiled and silent female, he asks Admetus to keep her for a while, suggesting that maybe a new woman is what the grieving husband needs. The latter has sworn to Alkestis that no one will replace her and he repeats his vow. \u00a0He has passed Herakles\u2019 test, and Alkestis is restored to him.<\/p>\n

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Herakles (Pete Simpson) rescuing Alkestis (Tymberly Canale), Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/em>Big Dance Theater weaves this heroic drama into something resembling a rehearsal for a version of the play that a group of actors are putting together with the aid of technology that is both up-to-date and slightly ramshackle.\u00a0 Aaron Mattocks, who functions as a blend of stage manager and chorus, makes announcements like \u201center Apollo,\u201d but Mattocks\u2019s head appears among a throng of duplicate black-and-white images of himself on a top-quality monitor on the table where he hangs out. Herakles (Pete Simpson) reclines with a beer in front of a vintage tv console. Admetus\u2019s father appears as a talking head (a Greek statue\u2019s angry face with Lazar \u2018s voice) on a monitor that\u2019s wheeled in on a wheelchair. A striking filmed image of a hand reaching down to grasp and pull Alkestis from the underworld is projected on a tall, narrow panel that streams suddenly down from above (set design by Joanne Howard, video design by Jeff Larson).<\/p>\n

The flawed Admetus is not only played by a woman (the redoubtable Molly Hickok), he has the look of a vaudeville magician, his head appearing several times over the top of a small, hand-held red velvet curtain\u2014now with a mustache added, now a battered crown, rolling his-her eyes. Later Hickok dons a silver-spangled jacket, but there\u2019s nothing phony about her portrayal of her character\u2019s grief and repentance. At one point, in keeping with the notion of magic, Alkestis (Tymberly Canale) lies inert under a black cloth\u2014only her pale feet showing; you expect her to be transformed when the cloth is whisked off. More mysteriously, she lies rigidly at the back of the stage, her weight apparently held up only by the backs of two folding chairs. Without fanfare, Herakles takes one of the chairs offstage. She remains suspended. (Herakles, by the way, is a drummer, wheeled in on a drumset, brandishing a cymbal. What better entrance for a loutish hero?)\u00a0 Alkestis returning from Hades is propelled forward on a dolly, garbed and veiled in white, seemingly lit from within\u2014a ghostly apparition.<\/p>\n

Battles, journeys, and rituals emerge through dance. Parson\u2019s choreography announces itself in an opening scene that all the characters eventually join\u2014stamping their feet and wheeling their arms through a series of repeating gestures. Chris Giarmo\u2019s movements as Hades are as insinuatingly lethal as his raspy voice. Canale does her own wayward private dance to delay the moment of death. (\u201cAre you done yet?\u201d asks the impatient Hades more than once. Finishing, she confirms the terms of her vow: \u201cGot it.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Curtains and images of curtains rise and fall, videos swim in (including one of Alkestis\u2019s children\u2019s faces, with the taped voice of a boy\u2014Simon Eskin\u2014 lamenting their mother\u2019s decision), a microphone becomes a telephone, a chandelier crashes down, clips from a black-and-white movie flicker and fade. On a suspended oval screen at the back, words from the play appear, along with other images both ancient and modern. In this shifting atmosphere, down-to-earth words and actions become strangely magical. Alkestis\u2019s dress is removed, and her grieving servant (Elizabeth DeMent) holds up a diaphanous black garment, as if helping her mistress dress for a party. Canale slowly rises up into it like a diver, hands first, and it falls around her. She\u2019s as good as dead, although the piece has barely started.<\/p>\n

Lit by Joe Levasseur, with intriguing costumes by Oana Botez-Ban (black tops and skirts for the men, with colorful panels that looked like weavings), The Supernatural Wife <\/em>is also buoyed by its aural atmosphere (although, the night I saw the piece, it was sometimes hard to hear the performers).\u00a0 Jane Shaw\u2019s evocative sound design encompasses David Lang\u2019s men<\/em> and additional music by Brunk Bert Vanden Berghe. Best of all: the cast\u2019s harmonized chanting (composed by Giarmo), as they sit on chairs in a ritual circle on the illusion of a marble floor.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still haunted by The Supernatural Wife<\/em>\u2019s ingenious layering of the lofty tragedy with down-home manners. Parson, Lazar, and the cast convey a carefully calibrated sense of performers impersonating performers who are performing Euripedes. Or rehearsing for a tragedy they don\u2019t fully understand, when, of course, they do.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be and not to be.\u00a0 That is a different question. It hovers above Big Dance Theater\u2019s The Supernatural Wife, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar\u2019s absorbing re-envisioning of the myth behind Euripedes\u2019 Alkestis. Already seen in Europe and appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music\u2019 Next Wave Festival in November, the work\u2019s U.S. premiere took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[102,100,38,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dance-theater","8":"tag-annie-b-parson","9":"tag-big-dance-theater","10":"tag-doris-duke-studio-theater","11":"tag-paul-lazar","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}