Word: plotless
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first incarnation, this revue, mounted off-Broadway in 1993, suffered from comparison with its predecessor, the plotless Side by Side by Sondheim, which was a joyful feast of the composer's best songs. The successor (with Julie Andrews and a mismatched company of four) seemed to consist of leftovers garnished with Sondheim's less nourishing material and served up thematically as an odd sort of cocktail party. This Broadway revise finds the party device strengthened, but still forced, and the selection of songs improved. The new cast, led by Carol Burnett with great warmth and good humor, is creamy...
...well be that Fosse's dark sensibility will prove even better suited to the '90s than it was to the '70s. How else to explain why theatergoers are cheering a plotless show without a single love song, an evening-long shudder of disillusion in which the women are hookers, the men pimps and the audience voyeurs, gazing raptly at one primal scene after another? You'll hoot at the zany antics of Steam Heat and weep over the sweet sentimentality of Mr. Bojangles, but the picture that will stay in your mind longest is the sinister image of a pencil...
...life." The Cage portrays a tribe of ferocious, insect-like women who kill the men with whom they mate; in Afternoon of a Faun, two dancers meet in a studio for a sensuous yet self-absorbed encounter that ends in an oddly tentative kiss. Later, Robbins adopted the plotless style of Balanchine, his mentor and idol, firmly denying that his new works were "about" anything but movement and music. Dancegoers knew better. Dances at a Gathering may not have a plot, but it is full of vividly drawn characters who relate to one another in abstract yet deeply emotional ways...
...Gray Matter, which opened the evening, was very short and nearly plotless. In context, however, that was acceptable. The play was a banal but appropriate introduction to the theme of the evening--exploring the Jewish mind. Ben (Zach Shrier '99), the main character, is a nice Jewish boy, whose Id (David Weiner '00) and Superego (Bede Sheppard '00) fight over control of his body. As the play ran through a standard repertoire of Jewish humor, it was most successful when the punkish, roller blade-wearing Id and stuffy, English-accented Superego take turns in dominating Ben. In these changes...
...scenes that followed, still almost plotless, begged the question, "How far will men in drag go for a pun?" As the characters milked every scene for a line, and every line for five more lines, the show began--no, continued, to drag on dreadfully...