Images: 
Total Rating: 
**3/4
Previews: 
January 17, 2008
Opened: 
January 22, 2008
Ended: 
April 13, 2008
Country: 
USA
State: 
New York
City: 
New York
Company/Producers: 
Ontological-Hysteric Theater
Theater Type: 
off-Broadway
Theater: 
Ontological-Hysteric Theater - St. Mark's Church
Theater Address: 
131 East 10 Street
Phone: 
212-352-3101
Genre: 
Avant-Garde
Author: 
Richard Foreman
Director: 
Richard Foreman
Review: 

on Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland (A Richard Foreman Theater Machine), which Foreman wrote, designed, directed (stage and film) and created the sound for:
Mysteriousness and obscurity as images are projected or posed, as blurred guttural voice images are growled. Japan and England on film. Attractive young women on screen and on stage in costumes. They are not actors, they are figures—on screen and off. Performance Art—a pastiche of images including a male Vampiric figure.

Foreman creates a surreal abstract world of sight and sound. Aphorisms pretend to profundity and can get tiresome. Foreman is a trip, and it's all him -- all the performers are replaceable since they are only called upon to pose, move a bit, pose. When you're about to doze, Martial Music! And loud buzzing—wake up!!! Okay - enough with the machine gun firing already. A great, giant, rather charming humming bird appears with flags on his head. Oh yeah, there's the too-bright flood of light in our eyes, repeated repeated repeated re . . .

It’s a rare voyage through a newly-created personal world, but it reminds me of the film "The Hucksters," about the advertising industry: "Irritate, irritate, irritate . . . Still, Foreman has created his own theatrical world—a rare conglomeration of a kind of personal madness/genius that reminds me of the Expressionism of Weimar Germany. It's an experience no explorer of tangential theatrical expression should miss.

Cast: 
Joel Israel, Caitlin Mcdonough-Thayer, Fulya Peker, Caitlin Rucker, Sarah Dahlen
Technical: 
Light: Miranda Hardy
Critic: 
Richmond Shepard
Date Reviewed: 
February 2008