SEARCH CurtainUp
REVIEWS
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
LA/San Diego
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
On TKTS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
NYC Weather
King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe
by Les Gutman
|
Stories hide the truth. ---Richard Foreman |
J. Smith, J. Francis and T.R. Smith
(Photo: Paula Court)
|
Ordinarily, Richard Foreman's plays bombard us with a grab bag of impressions to sort out afterwards. At their best, they implant footprints on our thought processes. In King Cowboy Rufus, we are again left with much to ponder, but the playwright/director's program notes uncharacteristically reveal his (not terribly well-disguised anyway) aim quite explicitly: "to put on stage, not George Bush himself, but a foppish English gentleman who, while seeming a figure from out of the past--yet dreams of becoming an imitation George Bush--acquiring that same power and manifesting similar limits of vision."
Thus venturing into the miasma of the current political environment, Foreman is sensitive to the risk of doing nothing more than "preaching to the converted". Yet it's unlikely his annual, eagerly-anticipated East Village exercise will attract many of the unwashed, and so we must consider how it functions, or could function, as political theater. In the final analysis, though it displays its auteur's signature artistic vision beautifully, it fails to do the one thing it must: incite its audience to action.
The play employs the standard Foreman-esque imagery and techniques (discussed ad nauseam in previous reviews which are linked below and thus not repeated here), but with his target identified, the shards on display here add up to more than they usually do -- markers on a path already cleared rather than detours on a road to some truth. Ironically, perhaps, in being so explained, they rob the audience of the heavy-lifting which Foreman trained us to do long ago, and which, in Foreman's very best works, is rewarded with even more trenchant truths. The story, it would seem, does indeed hide those truths.
Foreman may also have met his match in GWB. Who could invent a fiction to compete with the contemporaneous news: a president who, while riding huge deficits like a bucking bronco, announces a plan to occupy the moon as a stepping stone to conquering Mars? How could Rufus (Jay Smith), who merely trains his six-shooters on every empire in sight, trump that?
Smith manages to invest Rufus with affectations so perfect that they simultaneously feel both genuine and absurd: part monster, with a Texas-size appetite for everything from crowns to countries, part pathetic soul and much of the remainder, spoiled child. He is joined by a remarkably gifted pair of actors for his romps: T. Ryder Smith, who portrays Rufus' compadre, The Baron Herman De Voto, as if he were Humphrey Bogart portraying a sardonic Rasputin, and Juliana Francis as Susie Sitwell, described repeatedly as a coquette and acting like every woman that description conjures up. Flawless execution is a Foreman trademark, and this trio is more than up to the task as he leads them (and the seven members of his "stage crew") through his kaleidoscope effortlessly.
No one will be disappointed by the exhibition of Foreman's work in Rufus. And no one has the right to demand anything more of his efforts. But knowing the stakes, and having undertaken to explore them, for Foreman to have done more would have been welcome.
LINKS TO REVIEWS OF OTHER RICHARD FOREMAN PLAYS
Paradise Hotel
Bad Boy Nietzsche
Now That Communism Is Dead, My Life Feels Empty
Maria del Bosco
Panic
|
King Cowboy Rufus Rules The Universe Written, Directed and Designed by Richard Foreman with Jay Smith, Juliana Francis and T. Ryder Smith Costumes: Kasia Walicka Maimone Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes with no intermission Ontological Theatre at St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street (@2 Av) Telephone (212) 533-4650 TUES, THURS - SUN @8; $20, $15 (students), $25 (SAT PERF ONLY) Opening January 15, 2004, closing April 18, 2004 Reviewed by Les Gutman based on 1/16/04 performance |
Mendes at the Donmar
Our Review
At This Theater
Leonard Maltin's 2003 Movie and Video Guide
Ridiculous!The Theatrical Life & Times of Charles Ludlam
Somewhere For Me, a Biography of Richard Rodgers
The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Unforgettable Plays of the Last Century
6, 500 Comparative Phrases including 800 Shakespearean Metaphors by CurtainUp's editor.
Click image to buy.
Go here for details and larger image.
