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Commissioned for Berlin's 750th anniversary celebration,
Robert Wilson and David Byrne's four-hour adaptation of the
ancient Gilgamesh epic is very Germanic. Luckily, it picks up
steam as it goes along. Set in the 19th century, The Forest
uses the legend to symbolize the effecs of the Industrial
Revolution: the severing of man's connections to God and
nature, the unequal interdependence of industrialist and
laborer (Gilgamesh here is a factory owner who takes on the
wild man Enkidu as partner), and man's subsequent bewilderment
in the face of mortality. A lot of the performance at BAM's
Next Wave Festival is so-so. Wilson leaps in and out of the
legend as casually as his actors, speaking a text by Heiner
Muller and Darryl Pinckney, switch from German to English and
back. Byrne's score features some lovely writing for strings
and woodwinds, a few haunting choral passages, and quite a bit
of mediocre imitation-baroque music. and the two mimed
"knee plays" are completely expendable. but Wilson's
images, many borrowed from his previous work and from Beckett
(a surprise link), are stunning: a bare-breasted, blindfolded
woman brandishing knives; a ballerina on pointe and a tiny
crone walking some hairy monster; Gilgamesh's chic mother (the
superb Eva-Maria Meineke) obliviously playing cards all night.
And Howie Seago's final scene as Enkidu -- trussed up in black
tie, he knocks over his chair, walks downstage, lies face
flat, and expires -- shows the power of stylized emotions that
Wilson has often sought and rarely achieved before.
7 Days, December 14, 1988
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