131.
GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS
Going to the theatre in Greenwich
Village on Halloween can be a bizarre experience. The streets near the Public
Theatre last night were creeping and crawling with every variety of human and
not-so-human critter, dead, alive, and somewhere in between. As I ate my slices outdoors at Ray’s Pizza, a scraggly guy I took for a homeless man
spotted a mirror in the window of the hairdressing salon next door, knelt, and
began applying white and black ghoulish makeup to his already ghoulish
features. Takes one to know one, they say. I then walked over to the Public,
passing a long line of candle-bearing screamers snaking past Cooper Union, and
entered the intimate Shiva Theatre to see Wallace Shawn’s GRASSES OF A THOUSAND
COLORS, a 3-hour and 10-minute logorrheic exercise directed by Andre Gregory
that nearly matched in oddness the weirdness in the street outside. The
play is part of a mini-celebration of the 40-year-collaboration between Messrs.
Shawn and Gregory, and is being co-presented with the Theatre for a New Audience
company.
Wallace Shawn. Photo: Joan Marcus.
At the
intermission, the woman seated in front of me, said, “This is the most bizarre
play I’ve ever seen.” Since Mr. Shawn’s play is nothing if not digressive, let
me say a word about this woman, with her air of a stylish, aging socialite.
We began to chat when she was concerned about not getting a program. I told her
that, as with Shawn’s recent THE DESIGNATED MOURNER in this same venue,
programs would probably not be given out until we left. This is simply an
oddball quirk of the Shawn-Gregory collaborations; the official, if somewhat dubious
reason offered by the theatre’s staff is that they don’t want the noise of
fluttering programs to be a distraction. Anyway, the woman was rather friendly,
and we yakked about the latest plays, she being an avid theatergoer and even a
board member of a well-known New York theatre company. When GRASSES finally
ended, she offered her name and we parted, she to the Upper East Side, me to
South Queens. On a hunch, I Googled her at home, and found a 1988 interview
with her in the New York Times
describing her as a Renaissance woman, one of Wall Street’s leading investment
bankers, who had lived in Japan and spoke Japanese! Given my own background,
this too was a tad bizarre.
I
can recommend GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS only for dyed-in-the-wool fans of
Wallace Shawn, who not only wrote but stars in this four-character play; they
will have more than their fair share of his uniquely avuncular presence to
appreciate. They will also have the very special appeal of the voluptuous,
throaty Jennifer Tilly; the spirited Julie Hagerty, thin as a rail; and the
less well-known and considerably younger Emily Cass McDonnell. Mr. Shawn plays Ben,
a doctor/scientist; Ms. Hagerty his wife, Cerise; and both Ms. Tilly and Ms. McDonnell
his lovers, Robin and Rose. Another sexual partner, much spoken of, but never
seen is Blanche, a furry, white cat. Also important and practically a character
in its own right, is Ben’s penis, sometimes referred to simply by that word,
and at others as Ben’s dick or member. None of that Sgt. Johnson stuff (see my review of THE BANANA MONOLOGUES)
here. Ben says, admiringly: "It's so simple, no eyes, no nose, just a simple mouth." If this keeps up, male genitals will have to become “members” of Actors
Equity if they want to work on the New York stage.
The
play, first seen at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2009, consists of numerous
monologues, with only a few conventional dramatic scenes. Often, the narrative
is shared by two characters, always using direct address, and with only a
minimum of stage movement. Mr. Shawn sometimes speaks from a lectern, but, for the
most part, the meandering story is told from a long, white couch on an
otherwise empty stage, designed by Eugene Lee; there’s a set of closet-like folding
doors up center for entrances and exits. The rear wall also serves as a
screen for Bill Morrison’s video projections of fields of high grass, for slides (including one of Mr. Shawn as a young man), or for strangely
photographed and touched up black and white close-up speeches given by Ms.
Hagerty. Most effective in maintaining visual interest in what might otherwise
become a sterile landscape is the unusually beautiful lighting of Howard
Harrison, which constantly bathes the stage in delicately changing colors (like the names of the female characters),
while always keeping the actors highlighted just enough to separate them from
the wash of color around them. Bruce Odland’s music and sound design also offer
valuable support.
GRASSES, set in the not-too-distant future, begins with Ben, the doctor/scientist,
greeting us at a lectern with his doorstopper of a book representing his
memoirs. Short and bald, and dressed in slippers and silk dressing gown,
he resembles a wannabe Hugh Hefner. He sometimes reads to us from the book, but mostly moves away from it to share
with us the story of how he became very wealthy by solving the world's food
problems as the inventor of Number One Grain, a product that altered the
digestive systems of animals by allowing them to devour others of the same
species and thereby greatly multiply while decreasing the need for a dependence
on vegetation; not only did herbivores thus become carnivores, the animals also
experienced the side effects of a vastly increased sex drive, so pigs, for
example, began having sex 15 or 16 times a day, and trying out sexual
experiments previously unknown to animals. In this dystopian world, masturbation
has become something not to be ashamed of doing in public, just as it’s now
okay to have sex with your parents or in front of them.
Soon we’re
involved in Ben’s sexual experiences, which include a love affair with Blanche
the cat, and with his various orgasmic achievements, with both bestial and human partners. Fantasy and reality
collide as we meet his wife and mistresses, one of whom (Rose) first introduces
herself with a business card on which there’s a picture of her vagina. Much
talk of genitals, especially Ben’s own “best friend,” is aired, usually in matter-of-fact, non-erotic, chatty discourse despite the pornographic content. We also listen to
descriptions of violent bloodletting suffered by our offstage feline costar,
and to information about the negative impact Ben’s ecological meddling eventually
has on people’s lives. The word “vomit,” in fact, is something of a
leitmotif.
Perhaps
Mr. Shawn wishes to warn us of the dangers of scientific experiment, perhaps
not, but whatever his point(s), some casual theatergoers are likely to be more
concerned with keeping their eyes open than attending closely to the
seemingly never-ending monologues, no matter how charming and affable Mr. Shawn and his
able compeers may be. Mr. Shawn being Mr. Shawn, there's a full complement of clever, witty, and even brilliant material spread throughout his maddeningly overblown play. There's only one regular intermission, but some relief arrives at 9:20 when the audience is gifted with snacks (I had a hardboiled egg and a tiny cup of sweet red liquid). At 10:20 P.M., however, audiences will be glad that his shaggy dog or shaggy cat story has
concluded. Actually, I prefer to think of it as a shaggy pussy story, one that could stand a substantial bit of shaving.
