Saw the Wooster Group's remounting of House/Lights this evening down at St. Ann's--they last staged it in NYC in 1999 at the Performing Garage, and I feel very lucky to have seen it. Brantley's rave in the NYT is dead on the money:
The company has become the American theater's most inspired and articulate interpreter of an age in which machines mediate between the perceiver and the perceived, between subject and object. In its productions of the last 15 years in particular, it has increasingly specialized in ravishing, meticulous marriages of live and recorded performance that make it shatteringly clear reality ain't what it used to be.
And then, closing with the kicker:
The Wooster Group may be the only troupe in the world in which theater beats the movies at their own game.
I think he's right--there is amazing magic here, wound up in the electric lights and devil smiles, between the antic precision and their certain knowledge that the audience is with them as a guest and voyeur, not to be ignored and mistreated but delighted and subverted.
JM and I were walking home, discussing how strange ticket prices are--I've seen many shows that cost more than House/Lights, and many that cost less. It's rare beyond treasure to know that there are shows that are worth any price to see, and this is one of them.
11:05 PM