Paradisiacal Rites is a simple play stripped to its most essential exposition and action, and then inflated with endurance feats and a stage full of really nice props and set pieces. Three hours of this results in no enlightenment or even exhaustion. One leaves On The Boards with mild annoyance and as only much buzz as the cash bar can muster.
Admittedly this latest work by hot local troupe Saint Genet doesn’t look or sound like a conventional play—though early moments suggest Chekhovian alcoholic ennui. It sounds and looks like many of the pieces that get lumped under the heading of performance art with a quiver full of the form’s conventions. The performance has bursts of brutality and fleeting moments of interest, but the total effect is less compelling than spending those same three hours watching an intersection in Belltown.
The plot of this play centers on a gay couple, one of whom is the victim of a vicious attack. That event is wrapped up in imagery that ranges from the traditionally religious to the traditionally avant-garde. Musical accompaniment is performed live. Wes Hurley and Juniper Shuey’s projections on the rear wall both amplify and diffuse the onstage action.
The most impressive aspect of this performance is the set dressing and props by Casey Curran and NKO. In the first of the three acts the space is dominated by a field of grain (though the tow-headed stalks look more like dwarf elephant grass). This gets mowed down and scraped away mostly during an intermission that is as engaging as anything else in the performance. Only a third of the audience got to see the set change on Thursday night as the others ran for either the bar or some better event.
The highlight of the set, and the evening, is a pair of wave machines. One of these lies parallel to a fresh grave and remains throughout. This mechanized platform supports a deeply crenellated cloth of reflective gold material that suggests everything from votives to a blazing trench under John Torres’s shifting lights.
Other set pieces are less successful including a collection of bundles suspended from the grid. These endlessly spinning objects give the impression of a pair of pheasants that have collided in midflight, heads buried in one another’s bodies as they go on trying to fly through one another.
The set unravels over the course of the performance, most dramatically in the second act. A shift from minimalist loops to dance music takes us to a modern scene of hedonism full of inebriation and double-dutch attempted under strobe lights. The stage gets sloppy with water and wine, beer and effluences, talcum powder, soil, cigarette ash, and balloons discarded from whip-it huffing.
Any interest lies in the slubs in the monotony. Dancers step out of synch or slip in the puddles on the stage and fall with the grace of a basketball forward selling a foul. An actor pulls his pants back on, though they came off without attracting attention. Frequently, one feels that action has just ended in a quiet part of the stage while one’s attention is elsewhere. There is some interest in that effect but the monotony outweighs it and one’s attention returns to the wave machines.
