From Bated Breath Theater Company, the antics of this show, which winds through the East Village, offer little insight into Andy Warhol or his work.
It’s so easy. A Breton shirt, a silver wig, sunglasses with acetate frames — and there, suddenly, is Andy Warhol. There on a Citi Bike and there again on roller skates. Playing chess, striking a ballet pose, scooting through the drizzle. In “Chasing Andy Warhol,” a slapdash work of street performance by Bated Breath Theater Company, the pop artist, who died in 1987, has repopulated select blocks of Manhattan’s East Village.
Bated Breath’s previous show, “Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec,” a louche tribute to the French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, made its flâneur’s way through the West Village in the pandemic’s first winter, earning mostly favorable reviews. So maybe blame pandemic fatigue, the wet spring weather or Warhol’s distinct ability — in life, in art — to elude attempts to pin him down, but the antics of “Chasing Andy Warhol” register as mostly empty space, blank canvases that offer little insight into the man or his work.
Created and directed by Mara Lieberman, the show, which lasts just an hour, begins in Astor Place. A jean-jacketed tour guide (Fé Torres at the performance I attended) buckles himself into a daffodil-yellow airplane seat. From behind his seat emerges Andy Warhol (Kyle Starling, one of many Warhols). Warhol then leads the guide — and ticketed spectators — across streets, through plazas, into the window of a gym. Throughout, Torres offers tidbits of biography, which are almost entirely obscure if you are unfamiliar with Warhol’s history (“Was that Charles? Was that before you went to Hawaii? I thought you didn’t fall in love until later.”) and unilluminating if you are.
The text would matter less if the visuals were more dynamic. But, despite a few witty touches, like the framing of the Empire State Building, in homage to Warhol’s durational film “Empire,” the staging and the design feel shambolic and the choreography, by Rachel Leigh Dolan, rarely inspired. The vibe is cheerful, unrigorous and pointedly amateur, as in one scene when the actress playing Edie Sedgwick falls to the sidewalk. Edie has just died of an overdose; the actress is very clearly still breathing.
Just a moment later, an older man walking by noticed the commotion. “I knew Andy,” he said, sounding bemused. “I mean it.” Then he walked on.
“Chasing Andy Warhol” joins recent works, like the immersive Van Gogh exhibits, which reimagine modern art into contemporary experience. It’s the refrigerator magnetization of genius, which Warhol, who had a hearty appreciation and talent for the commercial, would have perhaps enjoyed. There’s a reason Warhol’s work is again in vogue (though, arguably, it never fell out of vogue) in a moment in which the categories of art, entertainment and business feel particularly confused. The show could be in conversation with these ideas. Mostly, it seems in conversation with itself.
Just about everyone knows Warhol’s adage, which today reads a lot more like a prophecy, that “in the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.” Watching “Chasing Andy Warhol,” I was reminded of another axiom, from Warhol’s friend Marshall McLuhan: “Art is anything you can get away with.”
Chasing Andy Warhol
Through June 12 at Bated Breath Theater Company, Manhattan; batedbreaththeatre.org. Running time: 1 hour.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
