Gag Reflex

Stupor

New Paradise Laboratories at Smoke, 233 N. Bread St., Sept. 23 at 8 p.m., Sept. 24-25 at 8 & 10 p.m. Fringe Box Office: 215-413-1318

Thus spake Whit MacLaughlin and Co.: New Paradise creates… artificial physical environments against which viewers can begin to perceive their own visceral grammar. We try to pull space apart by exerting certain kinds of stress on the body and the space surrounding it. If the images are arranged in just the right way, within just the right sonic environment, we begin to crack open a sacred precinct.

Whatever.

Stupor is a 70-minute theater piece in which 10 young men and women enact a series of sexually charged encounters that move from decorous courtship to unhappy, even deadly conclusions. Along the way, the cast members come together in mixed- or single-gender groups of two or three; strip down to dance trunks and tops; stroke/poke/hit one another (usually in the general direction of the crotch); and make a few random grimaces and noises. (Look not to the dialogue for further illumination. There are fewer than 20 lines in Stupor, and they go something like this: "Goddamn son of a bitch." Later: "Fuck. Idiot. Fucking stupid." This makes the Blair Witch Project script sound like Racine.) The "right sonic environment" is the de rigueur, continuous-track fragmented mix of electronic noise, Sinatra, classical music, etc. The "space surrounding it" features hanging light bulbs, which have now replaced the shaft-of-light-through-open-window-cut-in-distressed-wall as performance art’s preeminent visual cliché.

MacLaughlin cites Goya’s Caprichos etchings as an influence, but a stronger connection seems to be to Pina Bausch, whose dance/performance works evoke a similar world of relationships-as-ritual-combat. But Bausch — who was doing this kind of thing two decades ago — had more than history (or at least novelty) on her side. Her performers achieved an idiosyncratic but shared and coherent movement aesthetic, and her pieces evoke a haunting visual world. In contrast, New Paradise Lab actors attempt a unified physical style, but the results are primitive: So far their best trick is exceptional gag-reflex control (during the course of the show several members seem to fellate objects including playing cards, a stocking and a broom handle). And having located an effective performance space for Stupor — the low-ceilinged, craggy concrete basement of Smoke (where the company staged Gold Russian Finger Love during last year’s Fringe) — MacLaughlin puts nothing of comparable interest on the stage.

The extremely cool ensemble cast looked very pleased with themselves.

—David Anthony Fox

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