Do you have a sense of adventure? An appetite for the odd, strange, bizarre? Performance art filled with lots of action and surprises? Try The New Stage Theater Company’s Garden of Delights by Fernando Arrabal as imaginatively directed by Ildiko Nemeth at the Theatre for the New City. This is theater of the absurd plus dada.
A Movie Star (the beautiful, flexible and delightful Kaylin Lee Clinton who does some of the oddest dance movements I’ve ever seen), keeps a grotesque lackey (Chris Tanner) in a cage. She peeks back at her past in an orphanage and at her climb. Elements include a chorus of nine adorable girls as sheep (in woolly white wigs and brief costumes) choreographed like Rockettes by Catherine Correa and Nemeth, a mysterious bringer (Brandon Olson), and “Ave Maria” sung to the accompaniment of farts.
The designers, Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger, provide a simple clean set of flats with marvelous projections playing on them, including Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” and a huge egg as a prop, and there is a terrific soundscape with music by Jon Gilbert Leavitt. Lighting by Federico Restrepo enhances everything.
Nemeth has directed with great timing and synchronization of sound, projections and acting, and she can capture you into Arrabal’s surreal universe: an artistic adventure well done.
