What a feast this play is! Like the art of Robert Rauschenberg himself it's a feast for the eye, the brain, the heart, and the funnybone but also a feast for the ear because of Charles L. Mee's gloriously clever and involving script. Under Anne Bogart's brilliant direction, the America depicted by Mee (as if he were channeling Rauschenberg) comes thrillingly alive in all its nostalgic yearning, its simple Midwestern pleasures (Rauschenberg was born and grew up in Port Arthur, Texas), its delight in humble objects that the artist juxtaposed in his assemblages and collages (a stuffed goat sporting a pink tutu, a chicken in a baby carriage, a tire swing, a bathtub). Bogart and The SITI Company created the piece, which incorporates texts from Rauschenberg, Walt Whitman, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, among others.
Kelly Maurer, who plays Bob's Mom, is the calm and marvelous center for the goings-on. In her plain housedress and apron, she reminisces about her famous son while sharing childhood photos. In their fundamentalist family "art was not a part of our lives," she insists. Ah, but it was, unbeknownst to her, since so much in Rauschenberg's work comes directly from those days and that place.
This ceaselessly surprising and entertaining play constantly erupts into outrageous mini-plays (a woman in a skimpy swimsuit talks matter-of-factly to a man in a bathtub about having sex with him; Bob's Mom serves up a picnic meal of fried chicken, corn on the cob, potato salad and lemonade; a kilted woman playing bagpipes marches past), joyfully abandoned dances, chicken jokes, the crooning of love songs ("I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" is sung by a towel-clad man just out of the shower to his male lover as another man joins in to talk-sing the Ink Spots version), and stage-defying antics that beggar description (that old line about taking off one's wet clothes and slipping into a dry martini literally comes true in one unforgettable scene). Quiet moments reflecting how men and women feel (charismatic Ellen Lauren delivers a great speech here) and heartfelt exchanges about their love between two men, replicated later by a heterosexual couple, glow with understated passion.
There's also an eerie sequence with a confrontational pizza delivery man who tells about murdering his sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. And a homeless man (he sleeps in a cardbox box) lays out a grandiose, complicated, cliche-ridden movie scenario for the cast to enact. James Schuette's red, white and blue set delivers a Pop Art punch with its flag design a la Jasper Johns. The old "Laugh-In" TV Show comes to mind when cast members occasionally pop out of panels that open in the set's wall to speak or observe others.
Rauschenberg's work and outlook have brought comparisons with that of Walt Whitman, whose seminal poetry is quoted at length in Mee's play. The two men sing of American democracy and in their respective ways seek to bring art and life together. "Art lets us practice freedom," says one character. Whitman surely thought so, too. So, obviously, do Mee and Bogart in the free-wheeling masterpiece they've brought to life. One viewing isn't enough to take in everything that happens. It will knock your socks off.
