Radar Roundup

When curator Mark Russell calls his festival “Under the Radar” — implying a certain smallness — don’t believe him. His once-scrappy festival is now an established fact at the Public Theater, commanding huge crowds, many of them out-of-state producers shopping for their seasons.New Yorkers know Mr. Russell’s taste well — he swoons for densely verbal solo acts, movement-rich dance-theater hybrids, and anything that requires complicated venue restrictions — this year’s festival’s “Small Metal Objects” uses South Ferry terminal, 200 pairs of headphones, a crowd of commuters, and two bewildered pigeons to create a sweet masterpiece.Brazilian Michel Melamed’s work doesn’t require, but should probably include, a pair of emergency revival paddles. His poetic “Regurgitophagy” clips the monologist to dangling cables, which are then programmed to transmit an electrical jolt in reaction to any stray audience noise. Coughing, once rude, is now sadistic. Laughing suddenly seems self-indulgent when it sends Mr. Melamed shouting to his knees. And applause? His audience is his firing squad.Mr. Melamed’s text, a looping, profane, interactive riff on the power of language games, is (unfortunately for him) very funny. So, since we seem prepared to cause him harm, he comes dressed for battle. Occasionally menacing in his post-apocalyptic samurai gear, Mr. Melamed demonstrates an understandable aggression toward his audience. He touches on all kinds of torment, imagining a world in which he makes love to light sockets and we can do an algebra that can subtract George Bush. But though we feel like his opponents, his words bridge gaps like firing synapses. His pattering, dizzying text — rife with word associations and buzzing mental leaps — arcs repeatedly across any performer-listener divide.The hero-performer-writer of “Generation Jeans” is, by comparison, a damp squib. Against DJ Laurel’s background beats, Belarus Free Theatre’s Nikolai Khalezin displays the litter of a life lived behind the Iron Curtain — or, rather, its post-Soviet tatters. Describing for us the life of a pro-West political radical — from his youth selling illegal American jeans to his eventual incarceration for demonstrating against the government — Mr. Khalezin strews flags, plastic bags, and outfits around his tiny stage. Despite the undeniable power of his tale, the long-winded piece — falling prey to the hazards of “it-really-happened-to-me” theater — feels similarly unkempt.But there are perils in clean edges too. Visiting Euro supergroup Superamas presented their “BIG, 3rd Episode (happy/end)” at the Kitchen, and the poisonous piece didn’t have a hair out of place. The work does succeed in polarizing its audiences: Some find its hot naked babes crawling around with microphones in their mouths, an intriguing gloss on superficiality, while others suspect that imitating shallowness with such studious perfection (a filmed sequence shills for their corporate sponsor) simply results in more shallowness.The pursuit of happiness, particularly as damned by a show-closing Derrida video, possesses the production. Films of erotic massage (the instructor insists, “This is not sensual!”) and men avoiding responsibility punctuate lip-synched rock anthems (Nirvana) and borrowed film dialogue (“Mulholland Drive”).Production values and discipline are high — live scenes freeze and repeat, and the omnipresent voice-overs work like a dream. But all this artillery is brought to bear on a paper target.Smarts are not at issue, since Superamas shellacs on the Hollywood veneer to imply the stinking cavity beneath. That only damns them further. They wink as they turn women back into mannequins and theater back into a sort of Roman circus. But frankly, that only makes it worse. Not even Superamas can have its cheesecake and deconstruct it too.Luckily, the American avant-garde set had a piece in the festival as well, and it was a jaw-dropping doozy. Jay Scheib’s “This Place is a Desert,” down from Boston after years in development, sports the director’s customarily savvy use of video (by designer Leah Gelpe) and superb deployment of faux-amateurish sets (by equally crackerjack designer Peter Ksander.) Mr. Scheib seems to have swallowed an entire Whitney Museum catalog. But while Mr. Scheib has occasionally married unsteady content to his solid aesthetic, here his cast (including stars like Sarita Choudhury) and his text (a pastiche of imploding marriages) actually match him.The title “Under the Radar” may imply undiscovered potential. But in the case of Mr. Scheib, we are actually seeing an already major talent coming triumphantly into its own.

Radar Roundup

Radar Roundup

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