Jeremy Crutchley brings "Sacred Elephant" to La MaMa

Jeremy Crutchley in Sacred Elephant(photo by Rob Keith)

Fine-boned and mercurial, the British/South African actor Jeremy Crutchley has the litheness of a dancer. His masterful orientation to space makes you think there's much, much more of it than, in reality, La MaMa's First Floor Theater has to offer. His performance of Sacred Elephant--a stage adaptation of a poem by Heathcote Williams about these often exploited and endangered animals--dances as much as it vocally interprets an equally masterful, intense torrent of language, a blend of scientific observation, spiritual resonance and polemics. 

From its first inviting words and the first mad glance of the actor's red-rimmed eyes, you're roped into an experience you cannot escape: a wondrous encounter with beings of great power, intelligence, unexpected sensitivity and altruism followed by a reminder of the selfish destructiveness of that insecure "piece of work" Hamlet called "the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

photo by Rob Keith

Directed by Geoffrey Hyland, who adapted the Williams poem with Crutchley, this all-giving, 75-minute monologue never fails to engage and trouble the mind, senses or conscience.

Sacred Elephant runs through September 22, Wednesday-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm. Call 212-868-4444 or visit Smarttix.

For more information, visit the play's Web site here.

La MaMa (First Floor Theater)
74 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)