horribly good

oh, the horror of it. what madeline best and shawn irons and lauren petty and brian rogers have put together. called the horror the horror (I have plenty of energy to drive over there). if it drives you to abrons arts center tonight or tomorrow, i truly hope you get in. not too many seats there and what they have of them all up in the balcony, confined to its central section, so you get this awesome (a word i don't use reflexively) panoramic view down into the stage and across the first panels of walls to either side of the stage where video artists irons and petty splash their stunningly beautiful, alternately hypnotic and hallucinogenic imagery. rogers’s soundscape first lures you into a perfectly reasonable environment of road traffic and bird song then snares you the way a really nasty, grasping dream can do and, before you know it, you’re wondering if you’re hearing the passing roar of one of those 9/11 planes and later you’re recoiling from that mel gibson rant, you know, where he berates and threatens oksana and calls her everything but a child of god, only rogers has electronically manipulated this already scary thing to the extent that the madman’s pants and exclamations come out like the unearthly rasp of the beast outta hell. and then there’s best, who goes from being this slight, perfectly ordinary, pleasant-looking young woman drifting across the stage to this try-brid--simultaneously, a shadow, a live creature and a huge, lipsticked, thrashing head video-projected in this environment of creepy/violent sound and sight, transformed from second to second. all of this plus a heartstopping visitation from rachmaninoff. it's genius.

the horror the horror (I have plenty of energy to drive over there). See it tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm. Tickets.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street, Manhattan
(directions)