The Enunciation (What the Oxen Said)
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More than 40 years later, American performance artists still seem convinced that “acting” onstage is reprehensible, but unlike many of their predecessors, they offer little to take its place. Instead they pen scripts that demand skillful acting–or at least skillful reading out loud–and then imagine that sloppy, uncommitted performances somehow bring those scripts to life. Too often an evening’s worth of evocative text (it’s rare to find an evocative visual image) is recited by a handful of self-conscious art students who can’t seem to string two sentences together into a single thought. And–poof–performance art becomes indistinguishable from bad theater.
Robert Metrick’s three-hour “musical drama” The Enunciation (What the Oxen Said) tragically typifies this trend. With the pace of a snail inching through superglue in February and performers who appear to be not only lost but indifferent, The Enunciation seems designed to enervate. Though Metrick’s text is full of intriguing insights and exquisite images, precious few of them come to life in this performance, which he also directed.
Metrick’s biggest problem, however, is his complete inability to engage his actors (a few of whom, it seemed, couldn’t be successfully engaged even with a cattle prod). The 11 cast members appear to have just awakened from an unsatisfying nap–a scene in which two women struggle to stay awake is remarkably like all the others. Metrick actually accomplishes the heretofore impossible feat of making Jenny Magnus and Paul Tamney, two of Chicago’s most versatile and captivating performers, look like beginners. In the play’s final scene he even has Magnus, an accomplished vocalist, sing a 15-minute song consisting of only one note. This is like asking Picasso to paint his bathroom off-white.
