R. Pikser

 

Watching people and things fall down makes some people laugh; it makes others uncomfortable.  The audience at this last show of l’immédiat’s multicountry tour consisted mainly of laughers, whether they were over 70 or under 4, or every age in between.  As we entered the theater we saw a man seated on the scaffolding of a light tower downstage right, with all the plugs exposed to the audience.  Strewn about the rest of the stage, in half light, were some chairs,  a little bed and a little table in a little room with some clothes on a little rack, and, farther to stage right, there were some toys.  A large wall made of cinderblocks filled the lower right part of the stage.

 

At the top of the show, the man on the scaffold suddenly turned off all the lights.  Then one last light like a falling star plunged to the bottom of the tower; then there were sparks all up and down the tower, suggesting a theater-wide short circuit, as everything went black.  Next we saw a little hand-held light trying to find its way around the little room.  Finally, we saw a person, maybe a woman, coming home and trying to take off her clothes (maybe it was not a woman as we saw jockey shorts), but finding that the table in the room collapses, that her clothes won’t stay hung up on the rack, that the clothes rack itself collapses, as does everything in the room, including the walls, but not before someone, possibly a man,  jumps out of the bed and tries to put on a dress, with middling success. 

 

                                                                            Photo credit: Ian Douglas. 

 

The idea of the show is that entropy is all around; that we can’t count on anything.  Lights fall from the flies.  Tables and chairs collapse. The flies above the stage open to release multicolored containers.  The large wall at stage right slowly falls down onto the stage, revealing itself to be made of boxes.  Cabinets hide people, or people jump out of the cabinets, or they force themselves into tiny drawers and disappear.  A woman’s ponytail floats up towards the ceiling; later, her arm floats up, then her legs, until she herself floats up and the two men trying to hold her down are reduced to pushing a cabinet over on top of her.  She is finally contained and they drag her body offstage.  The performers dress in fur coats or men’s underwear, though sometimes they wear dresses.  They try to escape; they cry out.  This world is not fun.

 

In one section, different performers try to reach water:  first a glassful that is on a chair, then a quart bottle that is on a table, then a multi-gallon container.  But their bodies will not function: Legs will not walk; Arms will not reach; Hands will not grasp.  The performers are obliged to find strange ways to trick their bodies into reaching their goal and their very ingenuity is heart wrenching.  Feet are used in lieu of hands; arms somehow commence at the elbow; locomotion is accomplished by bouncing the whole body along on the stomach.  Once the water is reached, they fight among themselves, denying the water to one another.  This world is not nice.

 

 

At the end, the performers recapitulate the show, running through all the events backwards, until there is one final pile of rubble, the elements of creation, left in the middle of the stage. 

All this is done with seeming nonchalance and impeccable precision.  Some laughed at the slapstick element.  This reviewer was struck by the feeling of imminent catastrophe that threatens the lives of each of us every day.  May we deal with it with half the grace shown by the performers of l’immédiat.

 

L’immédiat

March 9^th-13^th, 2016

Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

566 LaGuardia Place

Tickets $35-$65

www.nyuskirball.org

212 998 4941