Walking up to the third floor Luesther Hall, you are immediately greeted by a wall of emptied bottles of booze, welcoming you, to a “scene” that is set to resemble a local music venue where you’ll sit or stand while drinking and listening to up-and-coming bands, while also eyeing the crowd for the attractive.
After the line of people at the bar dwindles, the white Christmas lights which hang over the space quickly brighten before the smoky lights of the stage begin to build, and the electronic riff of an electric guitar-being-readied sound. The feeling in the room that the creators of GOODBAR have created is something so familiar to most of us, that feeling (perhaps exciting/perhaps nervous/perhaps typical), that feeling of being out. In the city. Hoping whatever will happen. That the night before you can unleash just about anything.
And while for most of us this might bring to mind some sort of hilarious or wild story that we eagerly retell at parties or reminisce about with friends, what GOODBAR illuminates is those other kind of evenings that go from electric to total eclipse. Exhilarating nights that take a godawful wrong turn and you wish you had never left the house.
Partially based on the novel (and later film)Looking for Mr. Goodbar, we follow a young woman named Theresa (an infectious Hanna Cheek) whose pick’up at a bar turns fatal back at her apartment. Through basically a set by the band BambÏ, led by Cheek, and Kevin Townley, we follow a loose glimpse into Theresa and her struggles being single, sexual, and out in the city.
What creators BambÏ & Waterwell have created so effervescently is this world that so many of us experience from the time we are first drawn to go out in search of sex, intoxication, and experience. Through a visually arresting interplay between live performers and background video, GOODBAR presents a wash of stimulation that saturates the audience in that search for encounter, which speaks timely to some, memory to others, and possibly even a past life to older patrons.
And so the question of the evening becomes the importance of revisiting this period in one’s life. While the performance is bookended by reminders of Theresa’s fate, even showing newspaper clippings referring to her tragic murder, most of the performance belongs to the charisma of the performers and hooks of the band.
Most of the lyrics are difficult to capture, which would not matter if we were just hearing a band play, but in searching for some sort of meaning from this production you find yourself wanting to know what is being explored and why. By the close of the performance, I found myself feeling that we had just been told how these tragic events occur to people like Theresa, but with no exploration of why.
With the talent at work onstage, it is easy to simply enjoy the live concert and admire the unifying tie between the songs; however given how successful this team is at dipping their audience into the colors, fears, smells, tastes, adrenaline of looking for excitement, for connection, one wishes there could be larger questions being explored and discussed that the audience could ask themselves about that part of their lives.
GOODBAR
Created by BambÏ & Waterwell
Based on “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” by Judith Rossner
Directed by Arian Moayed and Tom Ridgely
Featuring BambÏ: Hanna Cheek, Cara Jeiven, Jimmie Marlow, Tobi Parks, and Kevin Townley
produced by Under the Radar
Thru January 15.
For more information: http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=465.
Matthew Paul Olmos was recently selected by Sam Shepard as the inaugural awardee of La MaMa ETC’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Award; he is a Sundance Institute Fellow, two-time Resident Artist at Mabou Mines/Suite, lifetime member at Ensemble Studio Theatre, terraNOVA Groundbreaker Playwright and current Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange where he is developing his absurdist comedy MONKEY, to be presented in April 2012. He is currently writing a 3-play cycle on the U.S/México drug wars entitled “SO GO THE GHOSTS OF MÉXICO. And will present a new work at La MaMa ETC in spring 2013. www.matthewpaulolmos.com.
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