Georgia Lyman
does the impossible. She performs alone on the stage at New Rep in Lee
Blessing’s wildly eccentric CHESAPEAKE
(running through Dec. 16th), playing not one, but five indelible
characters. Blessing’s clever premise places a struggling performance artist at
odds with a right wing politician who wants to pull the plug on the NEA.
Sound familiar?
Back in the late ‘80s Senator Jesse Helms et al objected to artists like Karen
Finley and Andres Serrano being awarded grants for material the religious right
considered to be obscene. Boston City Councilor Albert “Dapper” O’Neill even
vowed to prevent the travelling Mapplethorpe exhibit from seeing the light of
day at the I.C.A. He didn’t and it did. The NEA has been under attack ever
since, especially this election year…but now the right is aiming at PBS. We
live in strange times.
Blessing names
his nasty, fictional politician Therm Pooley (a name reminiscent of the late
Strom Thurmond perhaps) who in CHESAPEAKE
is famous for his proposal to “tax gays for their high risk lifestyle.” When he
targets Lyman’s performance artist, she sets her sights on him, even
contemplating kidnapping his dog.
She describes
another performance artist whose work inspired her to take up the banner: a
performer who whacked a frying pan one thousand times at seven second
intervals. I immediately flashed back to Robert Wilson’s THE CIVIL WARS at the
A.R.T. when a child bounces a ball 450 times. Just when you thought the interminable
bouncing was over, a film of said enterprise began to screen at the top of the
set just so you wouldn’t forget. (I never have.)
Performance art
has waned in Boston of late but for years The MOBIUS
Group hosted a ream of performances like Mary Novotny-Jones’ annual blindfolded
walk around the perimeter of MOBIUS’ warehouse roof: risky business indeed and
just what Blessing honors and satirizes at the same time with CHESAPEAKE.
Lyman’s tour de
force as the intrepid artist and dogjacker and everyone else is the must see
performance of the season. Kudos to Lyman and director Doug Lockwood. Blessings’s
play delivers a coup all by itself with a second act you could never imagine.
We were all guessing at intermission where CHESAPEAKE would go and we were all wrong. I
don’t want to give anything away but if New Rep were to enter Lucky at Westminster, the dog
would win every ribbon in the show.
