You've got a theatre jones on, but splashy tourist-friendly musicals seem tired. Fashiontribes has the answer: a Richard Foreman play.
His latest, The Gods Are Pounding My Head (aka Lumberjack Messiah) is playing at the Ontological Theatre (St. Mark's @ 2nd Avenue, 212.533.4650) until April 24. The Ontological Theatre used to be a church & seating is extremely limited so definitely get a reservation.
How do you describe a Foreman play? There's no narrative, in the beginning-middle-end arc-of-the-hero sense. The sets are always wild explosions of kitsch, Rube Goldberg contraptions, giant pods, enormous toys, and, well, stuff everywhere. An omniscient narrator tends to pipe up every now & then, making proclamations in a deep voice (my favorite was a Foreman play I saw a few seasons back where he kept intoning "Not Yet" followed by the "bing!" sound you hear when the NYC subway doors are about to close). There are always a lot of topical themes in his work, but the overall effect is like a vivid dream of visually arresting vignettes that leave you scratching your head, laughing, cringing, and generally being puzzled (sometimes in rapid succession or simultaneously) -- but it all somehow seems to hang together.
Definitely worth checking out...and less damaging to your DNA than acid.
