SITI: "Okay. That feels good to me."

In her Director's Note, Anne Bogart wonders how SITI Company's new DTW production of bobrauschenbergamerica--a work premiered in the innocent American spring of 2001--will resonate with today's audiences. Let me take a stab: We are now either too scarred and scared--and cynical--for this or we are greatly in need of its delirious good spirits. Actually, I can't decide which way to go on this question, but I can tell you that I, for one, love this show.

bobrauschenbergamerica works like one of Raushenberg's "combines" of homely things. It makes something magic(k)al of the mess. In its wild and basically good-natured juxtapositions, it keeps prodding you to reconcile what's artificial with what's natural or sincere. No, you don't get to choose.

It doesn't take diversity, of any kind, seriously in any dreary kind of way but rather turns the seriousness of social diversity into the exuberance of a neighborly smorgasbord, mercilessly dragging you to the table. If you're still kicking and screaming--you're overthinking, perhaps, why the whole cast is suddenly doing the Electric Slide or, at another moment, square dancing--this is a vaudevillian show that shoves pop music and fried chicken at you until you're helpless and giggling because, basically, it knows who you are. You're an American. This stuff--all of it--is your DNA.

And that's the way it should be--America, a delicious mess, a raucous work-in-progress. This visually-festive production and playwright Charles L. Mee spliced material argue that there's nothing we need to fix about that--and keep that in mind, Arizona. As the final words go, "Okay. That feels good to me."

Bogart's ensemble is, overall, great. But pay particular attention to performances by Ellen Lauren (Susan, a white woman in a racially-mixed couple rocked by fairly ordinary challenges) and Leon Ingulsrud (darkly sculpted by Brian H Scott's lighting and his own physical discipline, as he delivers his decreasingly funny chicken jokes).

bobrauschenbergamerica continues at Dance Theater Workshop through May 16. Click here for complete schedule information and ticketing.