I watched this in recording from the 2002 Production. You can watch it here until March 30th, 2020.
Wooster productions are not for the faint of heart. Don’t expect narrative spoonfed to you. They are best enjoyed when you let the images and words just wash over you for awhile, don’t try to make sense of them. The logic and meaning will make itself clear when it is time.
Elizabeth LeCompte’s production is visually stunning. Screens light up, areas seem to move, manipulated by light. Voices come from afar, and don’t match the bodies we see in space, and yet it is clear who and what align. Paul Schmidt’s adaptation of Racine’s Phèdre maintains only what is essential. The heightened emotions of this well known story of lust and betrayal are emphatically on display, heightened further through the metaphor of a badminton match which looks like badminton, but sounds like a video game. The physical choreography at times somehow seems surreal, the tiny movements of bodies contrasted with larger movements of the space. The frailty of humanity, and our unbelievable smallness is contrasted with the vast and uncontrollable universe in which we find ourselves.
This world is illogical, and yet completely recognizable.