Jason Zinoman reviewed In the Solitude of Cotton Fields
Posted January 11, 2012 at 4:43 pm
A Seller and a Buyer in a Puzzling Exchange
by Jason Zinoman, NY Times
“In the Solitude of Cotton Fields,” a visceral adaptation of a French play by Bernard-Marie Koltés, portrays a high-octane, sexually charged meeting between a dealer and a client, where the goods exchanged are unclear, but the high stakes are not. On another level, this production, staged in Polish with English supertitles by Radoslaw Rychcik, is about a confrontation between theater and rock concert. The rock concert wins.
This show at La MaMa E.T.C. opens in smoky darkness as a band called the Natural Born Chillers lays down a pounding bass line while two silhouetted figures dance. The Dealer (Wojciech Niemczyk) does a ferocious, fist-punching twist, while the Client (Tomasz Nosinski) shrinks and unfolds his body in a repeated violent motion.
It’s a hellish image, and as the lights go on, the men turn out to be wearing suits and skinny ties. They stand in front of microphones like rock stars, black eye makeup on their pale faces, telegraphing degradation and doom. It’s arrestingly theatrical, direct and simple.
The monologues that follow, however, are an awkward fit. For one thing, it’s hard to read the translated dialogue through the smoke. The language often trades in animal imagery and oblique, hostile warnings. And then, at a climax, the lights go out, giving way to a lengthy series of sensationalistic, often disorienting images (Is that a shot from “Twin Peaks”? Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Santa Sangre”?).
Even though this video is often pornographic, it’s oddly bland, compared with the remarkable intensity of the live performers, who come to the Under the Radar festival courtesy of Stefan Zeromski Theater. Technology can be a great tool, but it can also seem like an ornamental trick. Here it reminds us of the singular power of live theater.