Last chance to see Victoria Libertore's "No Need for Seduction"

If it's not Eros, it's Thanatos. And if it's not Thanatos, it's Eros.

The always provocative Victoria Libertore (My Journey of Decay, GIRL MEAT) goes right to the core of things in her latest monologue performance, No Need for Seduction. And if that's all there ever is--love and death--at least the seriousness of looming death can make us wake up and get serious about love. The 75-minute piece, which closes tonight at Dixon Place, traces Libertore's anxious uncertainty about her lesbian relationship with an easy-going, loving butch and the twisty, literally life-threatening journey to the mountains of Bali that appears to have resolved their situation.

Listening in as a monologist seated at a table with props and a few visual projections relates amusing or hair-raising true-life stories is certainly nothing new. But this is Victoria Libertore, a woman who can work what is really several distinct stories spanning many periods of time, at least a few geographical regions and a gaggle of characters into a pulsing network of tension, humor, poignancy and meaning. It's a network steely of construction with one possible exception--the inclusion of material on how Libertore confronted her father about memories of being molested by him as a child (memories and consequences previously dealt with in My Journey of Decay). This history surely connects to her later thinking and impulses in life, but it does not work as easily, as convincingly, as a thread in the fabric of this new, otherwise riveting performance.

Directed by Leigh Fondakowski

See the final performance of No Need for Seduction, a Dixon Place commission, tonight at 7:30pm. Tickets must be picked up by 10 minutes before curtain time for guaranteed seating. For tickets, click here or call 212-219-0763.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)