Theater Review (NYC): Reflections and Geographical History of America

What is the biggest divide in America right now? It’s not between left wing or right wing, black or white, male or female, rich or poor. Right now, the biggest divide in the U.S. is between those over the age of 30 and those under.

Those over 30 are old enough to understand the old world values that were overthrown in the era of the culture wars. Those under 30, however, were raised on subversion; the main pop culture artifacts were not Leave it to Beaver, Stagecoach, or the Beatles; they were The Simpsons, Pulp Fiction, and Nirvana. Unlike most who first experience subversive culture in college, those under 30 have been experiencing it since grade school, if not diapers.

Subversive culture is the product of academic discontent that long ago trickled down to mainstream culture. The two mindsets could be heavily contrasted by two recent New York off-off-Broadway plays. The first is Reflections, a compilation of plays by Beckett, Chekhov, and plays overtly influenced by Beckett and Chekhov. Cast with mostly older actors, it was performed in the higher-class Theater Row complex.

Geographical History of America, by contrast, was performed, produced, and conceived by younger folks; based on the work of Gertrude Stein in name only, it was performed by the Human Group, a name almost comical in its bluntness, and filled with no words beyond what would be on a ninth grader’s vocabulary list. The main intellectual difference between the two plays was that the former treated postmodernism like it was a bold, new idea, while the latter recognized postmodern ideas as boring and played out, and aimed to connect to a Facebook age audience.

Reflections was made by people who tend to talk down to younger generations with ideological cynicism, but its bigger problem is that the play doesn’t have the bark to match its bite. OK, we kids don’t know how lucky we have it; we’ve sacrificed discipline, politics, and concern for the bigger picture in favor of recklessness, apathy, and snark. But why is a production with actors, directors, and producers older than our parents playing in a half-empty off-off-Broadway theater? How can the actors be flubbing their lines and making technical errors straight out of high school? How can they think comparing high art (classics) to low art (new plays) is any edgier now than it was in 1968?

The mission of the seven-year-old Resonance Ensemble is “to weave a thread between the theatre's past, present, and future,” and Reflections comes straight from that mindset. It splices a play making fun of the failings of Samuel Beckett, in the style of Beckett, together with the Beckett play in question. It includes a wickedly cynical dismantling of Our Town, and features and refers to Swan Song, Chekhov’s first play, about a broke- down establishment actor robbed of his off-stage humanity. The problem is not that the selected plays are derivative — whatever their flaws, it’s pretty impossible to describe Beckett and Chekhov as derivative — but the ideas behind the play selections. The older, insider audiences to whom this production panders have all probably seen something similar 30 years ago.

Article Author: Ethan Stanislawski

Ethan Stanislawski is a freelance journalist/critic and new media specialist. He is a regular reviewer and staff writer at Prefix Magazine, and also contributes regularly to Blogcritics Magazine. His interests include theater, film, and pop music …

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