Solos and Tableaux

MI I IN 101l ±in III Le GroupeLas indicibles, Franklin Alley. A presentation noire outdoors. Warner Bros. crime film as filtered through Godard and Robert Wilson and returned, live, to the scene of the crime in a New York alley. A '30s gangster car, motor Idling, two thugs In trenchcoats, shots In the dark, a loveldeath dance followed by a red-gowned singer's Ilebestod (Carmen I think) and the car pulls away, leaving behind exquisite corpses. Very French (Les indicibles means "the Inexpressibles"). 26 Joan Jonas and Co., Double Lunar Dogs, The Performing Garage. Sci-fi Peter Pan, the garage a spaceship full of an all-star cast of cut-ups: Jonas and Jill Kroesen as iris on the loose, David Warrilow as "The Authority" on stunning video (by Michael Oblowltz), and Spalding Gray as a newwave Prospero, play-acting to droning music (by Richard Teitelbaum) and NASA films. Best visual moment: Jonas swinging above the audience. Best action moment: Gray quizzing the two women, "Do you remember this?" and holding up in turn, a red oar, a horn, a dog mask, a book (Oz by Baum), a rock, an oriental helmet, a black rubber glove, an apple, a toy car, an extension cord, some matches, and a globe. Stephen Wischerth and Bradley Wester, Transport, Inroads and The Kitchen. Intense, thundering drum trip with flashy travel film overlay (pro acted on front scrim) and neon lights. Short inroads version (performance poem) best, longer Kitchen one (two-part story) added busy epilog. Clean, simple, moving piece. Cindy Lubar, 119 Comments , Braathen Gallery. Hobo rummages in trash, finds index cards, and reads them aloud: They're remarks by visitors to the MOMA Picasso show (Lubar was a guard) which are curioussometimes funny, and run-on. So was Lubar's performance/picture. Fiona Templeton. Thought/Death, Downtown Whitney, and Cupid and Psyche, P.S. 122. Wordless solo of thinking and dy. Ingldead poses:Thought is what you'd guess-trying to remember with finger to forehead, wrinkling brow and smacking the hands infrustration , holding the sides and laughing quizzically. Death was more intense: snapshots of the finai moment taking place (failing, coughing, grabbing the chest) and later, of the I ftovers-a corpse. At first humorous-playing dead is fun-Death got serious with some nasty images (woman sprawled on bed, skirt hiked up over her waist) which took the piece to a pointed point: we're dead. Cupid was a crowd perforinance with bodies as sets defining space as well s"sto." Precise, cieveriy organized, abstracted movements playing out pro. grammed actions.Adisjunctive, cold curiosity. Talking Band, Giaconda and Si-Ya-U, DTW Economy Tires Theater. Living paintings, choral text, and stylized movement from gifted Open Theatrealumni. Fanciful story about the abduction of the Mona Lisa by her Chinese [over based on Turkish poem by Nazim Hikmet. Visually impressive, rhythmically erratic, musically flat-footed ("Paris calling, Hallo? Hallo?"), and finaily, a collaborative work with no strona noint of view. Cupid and Psyche 28 Michael Smith, Comedy Skits, Mudd Club and The Performing Garage. "Mike" sets up his sad saock self in sitcom sets "Honeymooners" style: cheap environments which sketch in the cliche. "Le Car" shows his gauche un-savoir faire. Drop dead humor for repressed gigglers. Susan Mosakowski, Circuits, The Open Space. Theater of abstract choreographed movement with weird props, visually elaborate sets, burbling electronic music, and a fragmented Interior monolog as voice-over. The narrative is like a cut. up female Watt's account of her world; "Joule's" universe is one which keeps her in constant mo. tion with no stable resting places, no fixed pointsof -view, no real direction except a labyrinthian straight line. Guys-"Watts" (Matthew Maguire) and 'Switch" (Jeffrey Jones) lurk around the edges. Formally beautiful, emotionally elusive. Eric Bogoslan and Co., The New World, DTW Economy Tires Theater. The urban landscape with Bogosian as a Rod Sterling narrator, snatches of Glenn Branca's music as ominous color, and a series of unconnected , nightmarish episodes with Twilight Zone twists. Acting was naked naturalism, thin TV gestures and emotions Stylized acts worked better, especially scenes with characters whose "natural mode" is highly codified with sass: a taunting...