Marcel Marceau eat your heart out!
BILLY THE MIME in AMERICA LOVESEXDEATH
Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 7:00PM
Thursday through Saturday at 7 PM and 10 PM
August 23rd – September 29th
Opens September the 6th
The Flea Theater
Never a Mumblin’ Word
Reviewed by William S. Gooch
In America’s short history, three overarching themes dominate the cultural landscape: love, sex and death. We love sex, we love violence, and we are in love with what we love, even if it is bad for us.
In AMERICA LOVESEXDEATH, Billy the Mime has created a mélange of vignettes that illustrate the lives of famous and infamous Americans. Using very few props and, of course, no dialogue, Billy the Mime has formulated a production style that gives the audience an insider’s view into a particular cultural event or phenomenon.
The standouts in the 12-plus vignettes performed on September 5 at the Flea Theater were, “The Abortion,” “The Sixties,” “Thomas & Sally–A Night at Monticello,” “A Night with Jeffrey Dahmer,” “ A Night in San Francisco: 1979,” and “The Clown & The Beautiful Woman”. Although each vignette lasts no more than five minutes, Billy the Mime expertly conjures up images that remind us how much these cultural events and icons have informed our lives.
In “The Sixties,” Billy the Mime helps the audience experience such cultural images and icons as Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Summer of Love. With an arched back, puckered lips and defiant strut, Billy puts an ageless rock star front and center. Folded arms and the peace sign bring to mind the 37th President, and mimed scenes of protest and police brutality evoke anti-war demonstrations.
“Thomas & Sally–A Night at Monticello” is perhaps the most racially sensitive subject of the evening. Billy the Mime comically presents Thomas Jefferson as a man of the southern gentry with a dirty little secret. Between minuets with folks of his social class and standing, Jefferson surreptitiously sneaks out for a little hanky panky with sweet Sally Hemmings. With each clandestine rendezvous, Jefferson’s lust for his café au lait mistress grows stronger. Jefferson’s lustful urges are so powerful that he can barely resist the smell of Sally’s sexual sweetness on his fingers while dancing the minuet.
The most macabre vignette on the program was that of “A Night with Jeffrey Dahmer.” Billy the Mime acts out Dahmer meeting his victims, drugging them, killing them, cannibalizing them, and storing their heads in the refrigerator. Again, using only mime and movement, Billy takes the audience on this psychopathic journey without missing a beat. He unapologetically and eerily becomes Jeffrey Dahmer.
If there is one drawback to AMERICA LOVESEXDEATH, it may be that some of the vignettes are cultural and age specific. Case in point, in “ A Night in San Francisco: 1979,” anyone under the age of 30 may not have understood the reference to gay night clubs, multiple sex partners, and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Still AMERICA LOVESEXDEATH does what good performance art should do: educate, entertain and inspire. And all accomplished without a word mumbled.
Marcel Marceau eat your heart out!
Tickets for AMERICA LOVESEXDEATH are $35 Tuesday through Thursday, $40 Friday and Saturday. For tickets, visit www.theflea.org or call 212-352-3101.
Flea Theater