"Gloria's Cause" at On the Boards: Yankee Doodle Deconstructed

Photo: Ben Kasulke

Thank god for Wade Madsen. I could watch that guy do anything. Eat dessert, for instance. Last night, I went to see Dayna Hanson's "Gloria's Cause" at On the Boards (through Dec. 5) and there he was, eating cherry pie. Big as life!

He was concerned, as I overheard from a conversation with dancer Jessie Smith, that if he, Wade, read a letter for her, we, the audience, might become confused that he was the letter's author--Paul Revere--rather than George Washington, which is the plum role he was really looking forward to playing. (Thus, I'm assuming, the cherry pie association, rather than the more immediate Warrant reference.)

That is another reason to be thankful, because honestly it is not very easy to track what's going on onstage, which ranges from reenactments of the Albany Congress in 1754 to the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, while Jessie Smith and Jim Kent dance, the band Today! plays songs, and Madsen, Pol Rosenthal, Peggy Piacenza, and Hanson herself act out informal "real world" vignettes. Oh, and of course, there's the meta-commentary of the overheard moments as I described above.

I find myself grudgingly respectful of this palimpsest formalism; at times, "Gloria's Cause" plays like a Schoolhouse Rock for a new generation--you might be baffled at how anyone might learn something from it, but it's agreeable and it has a fun beat. On the didactic side, you learn about Deborah Sampson (danced by Jessie Smith), the woman who dressed as a man so she could enlist in the Continental Army.

There's also a scene where Rosenthal, Dave Proscia, and Madsen are quibbling over who's going to get started writing the Declaration--their fearful knees shake so much their pants fall down, and the performers admit to a failure when it comes to really connecting with the wording of the hallowed document. Later, Madsen has a very fine moment as a drunken, defensive George Washington appearing on a trashy ambush talk show to berate a soldier who called him "wishy-washy." (True story, at least about the doubts in his command.) 

It's Piacenza, in red bra and panties beneath an Army trenchcoat, and wearing a eagle's head, who finally locates the rage and frustration that rises from the gap between our country's founding rhetoric and consistent inability to quite measure up. Her call-for-empathy polemic spirals out of control, out of language, and into a wounded-bird flopping around the stage. It was a little too fierce for some, who tittered. But I would have liked to have seen more of that passion. As I say, I can respect the discontinuities, the "blurring of the edges" to allow for a little less iconography and a little more relatability, but I felt more entertained and less moved or provoked than I'd hoped. (I don't really love slideshows in live theatre, but the music--Today! ladies and gentlemen--was good.)

This feels a little ungracious, because the evening is filled, from start to finish, with strong performances, from Pol Rosenthal's opening monologue and Peggy Piacenza's outburst, to the seemingly ceaseless pas de deux of Jim Kent and Jessie Smith, and ensemble unisons that kept the individuality of the dancers, from Madsen's storky elegance and Smith's serene glee, to Hanson's spare watchfulness. If the ideas here never fully coalesce, neither has our goddamn nation.