Sarah on theater

This was bizarre. The choreography and dancers were stunning; it’s just that they happened to be buried in a chaotic pile of other stuff. I’m going to dump a bunch of spoilers because nobody on this app is going to see this show in the next 2 days and I need you to understand what I mean.

In between a couple of gorgeous tentpole modern dance sequences, all of the following happened in a tight 90 minutes:

• They spewed a disorienting number of fourth-wall-breaking truths and outright lies at us, often in the same sentence,

• A man spray painted X’s on the floor,

• Hard hats were passed out to the audience,

• They played a prank on us by telling us there were rocks under our seats, but there were not,

• They repeatedly threw a giant rainbow beach ball up into a hanging net, which was a two-person job and an impressive feat of coordination,

• Venus de Milo’s arms popped off while standing atop a flipped trash can,

• Ida Saki pulled thong underwear over her head and down her torso, then back off, and slingshotted it away,

• Ida took a sip of water and then spit it on the floor,

• A woman was planted in the audience for a non-sequitur about 45 minutes into the show in which she needed to catch a train,

• The giant rainbow ball was punctured, giving way to the introduction of a slightly-less-giant white ball, which may or may not be the moon,

• Marisa Tomei finally materialized after an hour as a profoundly-sweaty paleobotanist,

• A man smashed through one of the walls on set with a hammer and declared that the building would be bulldozed in ten minutes,

• The same man then led the company in Irish dance, portrayed as repressed childhood wish fulfillment,

• A real live baby! was supposed to push the rainbow ball in one scene, and just babbled and crawled away instead, which was VERY cute,

• The whole company did interpretive movements to a theme of “what if your father was a tree”

There’s some interesting themes hinted at in there. Sisyphus’s futility is prodded at, sure, but we also get some discussion of fossilized trees, frozen in place, as a metaphor for “How do you want to be remembered?” - likening them to how, thousands of years ago, humans painted themselves dancing on the walls of caves. There’s also an examination of the gendering of the Sisyphus story (as hinted at by the title, “Sissy”) which concludes that a woman would never have pushed a rock up the hill to begin with, because women, of course, cannot understand parables or relate to universal human experiences.

I would love to have someone who gets it (and isn’t lost in the symbolism sauce) explain it all to me. I feel like I’ve fallen victim to an immaculately-executed practical joke, but I also kind of had a blast.