The Repeat Generation

Aristotle called theater “the imitation of an action,” and no one takes him more seriously than downtown darlings the Elevator Repair Service. In “No Great Society,” a pair of wildly lopsided acts at P.S. 122, the company re-creates two of Jack Kerouac’s most famous television appearances, right down to the microphone noise and Kerouac’s drunken slurrings. Aurally, the scenes seem to be verbatim re-enactments, though the actors exaggerate their physical “text” or layer their responses like simultaneously played tapes. Sometimes, they even tap-dance. At least with these guys, there’s no mistaking the imitation for flattery.“Society” follows hard on the heels of the Wooster Group’s “Poor Theater” – the two companies share members and methods and use documentarystyle performance to explore a beloved influence. But where “Poor Theater” used Jerzy Grotowski’s own favorite techniques (reverence and physical exactitude) to better understand him, “No Great Society” seems to be working against Kerouac.The dry ERS humor sits uncomfortably with Kerouac’s sloppy, stream-of-consciousness vibrancy.And despite a killer first act, the second rambling half of the show does more to send up the father of the Beats than to pay him homage.Kerouac railed against imitators throughout his short life – decrying the “beatniks”who put on the beat sensibility like a pair of cigarette pants. In 1968,he made an anarchic, drunken appearance on William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” talk show, which ERS starts off with. He sat on a panel with sociologist Lewis Yablonsky and Ed Sanders of the Fugs. Ostensibly, they were there to discuss the hippie phenomenon, with the 40-something Kerouac as the “granddaddy of it all.” Instead, it made the original dharma bum look like a deteriorating madman and his acolytes like dazed idiots.Susie Sokol, dressed in a wool skirt and jacket, plays Kerouac. Barely tipping the scales at 100 pounds, Ms. Sokol looks a bit like Audrey Hepburn doing the “hep-cat” dance from “Funny Face.” But she plays Kerouac like a broken firecracker, too damp to actually explode yet still hopping around in angry little fizzes. In the giddily exciting 40-minute re-enactment, Ms. Sokol mocks and harangues the other panelists, muttering and repeating their words like a bad-tempered scat artist.This half of the show is masterful. Scott Shepherd plays Mr. Sanders, and Vin Knight is droll as ever as Mr. Yablonsky, and can get a laugh just with his white, patent-leather boots. Mr. Knight does a pitch-perfect “nerdout-of-water.” Ben Williams skewers Buckley’s lazy-lidded insouciance – he strokes his chair like a lover, then proceeds to slide nearly out of it. In a collection of jive cats, who would have dreamed that William F. Buckley would come off as the swingiest?But they then dial the clock back to 1959, when Kerouac was closer to the height of his powers. Mr. Williams becomes Steve Allen, the composer and television host who played jazz piano when Kerouac read his work on air. Messrs. Shepherd and Knight disappear, leaving Ms. Sokol to solo (Mr. Williams “plays” in the background by accessing tracks on an electric piano). As a duo, Ms. Sokol and Mr. Williams complement each other – he is smooth and soothing; she seems to be made out of stickleburrs. But Ms. Sokol’s jumpy, hyper-choreographed presentation makes a better accent than a wall color.Her text is Kerouac’s narration for the experimental film “Pull My Daisy,” which, without Robert Frank’s footage, is completely incomprehensi ble. If you know that the film celebrated the Beats’ bad-little-boy misogyny, there is something delicious about putting its script in a woman’s mouth. Without context, though, her words eventually sound like randomly generated hash. Certainly more people claim to be Kerouac fans than actually read him, but if director John Collins wanted to prove that Kerouac could be completely alienating and inaccessible, this is a cruel way to do it.Simply, asymmetrically positioned in the P.S. 122 space, the set consists of two large, painted floor areas, one white, one gray. Mr. Collins (designing as well as directing) paints permanent shadows on the floor – when Ms. Sokol finally wheels her chair away, she leaves a circular shadow behind her. In an uneven, boom-and-bust evening, Mr. Collins is still making a lovely comment about artistic legacy. In Kerouac’s last moments, Ms. Sokol stands far away and nearly in darkness.The white floor around her, though, implies that Kerouac is still shedding light. After a rough 40 minutes with him, many of us have grown a little tired of “beat” selfaggrandizement. But Mr. Collins seems to be saying that no matter how fallible the artist, it’s the legacy that matters – the long shadow that even a self-destructing artist can throw.Until February 18 (150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, 212-477-5288).

The Repeat Generation

The Repeat Generation

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