Course Blog #21 - The Review that Got It Wrong (Jess)

I didn't see Black Watch with the rest of the class, but I did see 44 Plays for 44 Presidents, performed by the NeoFuturists in Chicago. This assignment was harder than I anticipated - - - most reviews I found were quite positive, so finding the Review That Got It Wrong was a bit of a challenge. But, lo and behold, TimeOut Chicago's review fit the bill.

Benno Nelson reviewed the roughly 2 hour long play, and I feel he missed the mark. He calls out two specific performers to applaud their work and gives a quick synopsis of a few of the presidential vignettes, but he completely ignored the parts of the show that gave it soul and structure. He left out any mention of live musicians, song, dance, puppetry, or any of the myriad mediums used to tell the 44 stories on stage. He also failed to include any reference to how the NeoFuturists cast the show, which was gender and color blind. I suppose potential audience members would be aware of the NeoFuturists' reputation as more unconventional storytellers of sorts, but Nelson did a disservice to the work and performers by omitting these key elements from his review. Levin's ideas on why opera is unsettling work here with this show, and are very important to understanding the work as a whole. It's a mix of performance mediums that upset traditional notions of space, bodies, and narrative, and Nelson didn't recognize the importance of that, apparently.

He did have something quite astute to remark on, if wrong in my view: "Where the evening struggles is in the impenetrability of its curation. The tone, form and content of the plays is unpredictable and too often feels forced or self-important." It is absolutely key to note the impossibility of a venture like 44 Plays for 44 Presidents. To encapsulate the lives and times of all our presidents is indeed a futile pursuit, since there is no singular truth or narrative to define the presidency in all its human parts. So, with this in mind, the NeoFuturists crafted specific vignettes that illuminate (or reiterate) slivers of what a particular president represents to America very generally, how they came to power, or their life stories that could inform their choices made as president. Their aim was not to give a definitive, detailed portrait of each president, but to, at best, craft moments in which truths or opinions about each president were revealed.