The digital magazine of New York indie theater
Loading
nytheatre.com review by Julie Blumenthal
Born out of World War I, Dada was first and foremost a political art form: a questioning of the appropriateness—or even the existence—of art and culture in the presence of war. In Soiree Dada: Neue Weltaffen (which loosely translates as “New World Monkeys”), Chicago-based WNEP Theater presents a taut and clever hour which whisks us from rant to art history lesson to impromptu skit and political seminar, all laced liberally with vitriol and goofiness.Clad in whiteface and sporting questionable European accents (and sharply directed by Don Hall), our Dadaists, Jen Ellison, Emily Dugan, Bob Wilson, and Steve Zimmers scream, flirt, and entertain, demonstrating both a history of Dada and the hobbyhorse itself in action, with many a wink and a nudge. We’re comfortably in on the joke; and it’s a fun ride, fueled by the enthusiasm and wit of the ensemble, each member of which has several priceless moments.But it’s this comfort level that left me uncomfortable. Tzara and the gang at Cabaret Voltaire wanted to entertain, but they also had a deadly serious purpose: shocking their audience into some sort of moral imperative in the face of the moral bankruptcy they felt was evidenced by war.I don’t think we’ve become unshockable; but if modern media, and our response to it, is any indication, it’s at least as difficult as it was in 1918. In the face of horror, the only remaining horror is our lack of horror—or something like that. How to rise to this challenge, I’m not certain; but in taking up the mantle of Dada in America in 2005, the gauntlet is down.As a result, aspects of Neue Weltaffen felt to me like a historical stand-in for something all too present. Those imprecise accents (other than Ellison’s, which is as meticulously spot-on as the rest of her commandeering, seductive, nod-to-Weimar persona) are a case in point: Soiree Dada largely leaves this form in its historical frame, presenting it as a time capsule with reflections on our current era, rather than bringing it fully to life in the present.WNEP has been performing iterations of these Dada soirees for nearly ten years, and I wonder how much the work has changed during that time. We’ve surely been New World Monkeys all along; but for a genre birthed in the horror and absurdity of war, our circumstances should exert an irresistible pull. Reflections on current events (Terri Schiavo and the cost of gasoline among them) are enjoyable, but it is the deeper resonance with Dada’s roots and our current political climate that hits the spot Tzara and Co. originally aimed at in their audiences’ conscience. (Interestingly, these moments occur on a more absurd, less literal level than those clever rants on capitalism and society, which a FringeNYC audience swallows as smoothly as cyanide-laced candy. In contrast, moments like a dismembered baby doll discovered to the wails of its “parent,” or a woman struggling to be “correct” at a game whose rules are unknown, vibrate at the level of myth—and truth.)It’s odd that I’d ask to be shocked, but Soiree Dada is good enough to make me hungry for more of what Dada was born for.We have our war, sadly; we need our Dada!Copyright © 2013 The New York Theatre Experience, Inc. All rights reserved.
