Jessica and I went to see *One Song* at the NYC Skirball Center on Oct 4, 2024. It's a Belgian production brought to New York by NYU and L'Alliance New York, a local organization that promotes French and French-language culture and performances.
It was a Miet Warlop production - - she conceived of the show, wrote the text, directed it, and designed the set. The music was by Maarten Van Cauwenberghe "with the cast" (as it says in the program). It was a fascinating, exciting, perplexing show, definitely unlike anything either of us had ever seen before.
I think it was called *One Song* because they were allegedly performing one song the whole time. It really didn't feel like that, the show was constantly changing and there was so much stimulus going on up there, I didn't really notice that the music itself wasn't changing.
Here's a photo of the set.
The first person onstage was an older woman (let's say she was in her 70s or 80s) wearing a red pseudo track suit. She sat down in the bleachers along the back of the stage and started talking into a megaphone. I couldn't understand what she was saying, partially because she was speaking in French and more because the sound quality on the megaphone was so crappy. She went on for quite a while, it was honestly a rather tiresome way to start a show.
Five young people (in their 20s and 30s) came in and sat with her in the bleachers. They were sports fans. I'll call them the fans.
Five other young people (same age) walked on and walked across the stage to the right. I'll them the athletes. They went through the motions of warming up before a sporting event. I thought this was for show, I didn't imagine that they'd actually be exerting themselves in the performance. The lady with the megaphone introduced them one by one. A few members of the audience applauded when she introduced a couple of them.
The athletes were one woman and four men. The woman was the first to break apart from the others. She went to a metronome at the front of the stage and started it up. Its TICK TICK TICK was amplified. She walked to the balance beam on the left side of the stage, had some help getting onto it, and was handed a violin. She stood on the balance beam and played the violin. Sometimes while standing on one foot.
One athlete wearing a padded helmet laid down center stage and played the string bass, which was propped up to lay on top of him. He mostly laid down but once per phrase he would have a note that would be high up on the fingerboard and he'd have to do a crunch to get his finger up there to play this high note.
The blond guy walked over to the treadmill, started running (slowly) and singing. There was a microphone on a stand, set up in just the right spot, so he could run on the treadmill and sing at the same time. At a certain point in the song he would sing in falsetto and invariably he would turn to the fans sitting in the bleachers, his back to the audience, running backwards on the treadmill. Then he would turn back to us when he was no longer singing in falsetto.
This blond guy was pictured in the ads and interested me in the weeks leading up to the show - - the concentrated, intent look on this face and of course his longish curly blond hair and the little moustache, it was all very appealing. Then I saw him in person, saw that he was 5' 3", and dear Lord, game over. What a dreamboat.
The guy with dark brown curly hair played the drums. They were set up at four stations across the stage and he constantly had to walk a number of steps to get over to the next drum. The end of each iteration of the song involved him playing two drums with two sticks, one drum on either side, in rapid succession. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. This was more exciting than I'm able to convey.
The guy with reddish brown curly hair stood in front of a wooden apparatus. He jumped up and down constantly on a springboard and once per phrase he would need to jump high enough to play a chord on the electric keyboard that was affixed to the top of this wooden apparatus. At various moments he would sort of run on top of a pedal to hit a drum on the floor many times in rapid succession. More BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.
The music stopped after about fifteen minutes (the whole show was blessedly brief, just over an hour) and the bass player played a brief excerpt from one of the Bach cello suites. Then he went over to the metronome and made it slow. The other athletes played at that tempo, didn't like it, and the keyboard player went to the metronome and sped it back up. They went back and forth like this for a while, it was amusing and a welcome bit of variety.
Meanwhile another guy in a majorette uniform danced around with pom poms. I was conflicted over whether to refer to it as a majorette uniform or a majorette costume. The members of a marching band wear uniforms, so shouldn't the majorette also be wearing a uniform? Is it more of a costume when worn by a man? Is it more of a costume if that man has a shaved head and a 70s porn 'stache, as this guy did?
He mostly danced around with his pom poms but about halfway through he started moving around a bunch of white signs, about 2' x 2', each with one word sculpted into them. I thought they were made out of molded paper. Eventually the majorette guy picked up one of these white signs and started spinning around in circles, holding the sign out in front of him. For what felt like ten minutes, constantly spinning around. He decided he was done with that, stopped spinning around, and let go of the sign, which we now realized was made of PLASTER.
I emitted a heavy sigh at one point because we had a visit from that 21st century avant garde theatre cliché, dripping water. I suppose it was interesting watching the drumsticks splash the water all over hell. The dripping stopped and the five athletes cleaned up the water with some big towels.
The whole show was a tour de force of ability and endurance for all five athletes and the majorette. The fans had it easy, the most they did was whirl their heads around to show off their long curly hair. The endurance of the audience was also tested because the music was so damn LOUD. It was literally painful to my ears.
Whenever I see a show with a friend I always send them a draft of my review before I publish it. They often have corrections or things they want to add. Jessica interpreted the show differently and wanted to hear more about how it made me feel. Honestly, I was so stupefied I didn't feel much of anything! It was exciting, it was impressive, but it didn't move me at all. It didn't seem that was the intention so I don't feel like I missed out on anything or that I didn't GET it. I'm glad I saw it, I'd consider seeing another show by Warlop, but if I do go another time I am definitely bringing earplugs.
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