(2005-05-18) Boozy

I'm going to see Boozy tomorrow night (Live Performance). The show tracks the life of Robert Moses, the man who transformed New York City's landscape in a series of Public Works projects from 1924 to 1968, including the Triborough Bridge, the West Side Highway, Jones Beach, Shea Stadium, and Lincoln Center. The press release says, "With guest appearances by Benito Mussolini, FDR, and the ghost of Baron Von Haussmann, Moses learns from the greats until true power is finally his. Free Mason-s dance, FDR levitates, and Daniel Libeskind silently weeps. None shall be spared.".. Among the principals, I was especially taken by Nina Hellman as Jane Jacobs. Jacobs is the thread that ties together the play's real-world story (more-or-less accurate biographies of Le Corbusier and Moses) and its off-the-rails counterpart (see the description of the Goebbels/Mussolini rabbit conspiracy, above), and Hellman finds both the seriousness of Jacobs's passion for Emergence theory and the camp in the revenge fantasies of a scorned Frenchwoman. Characters also include Fiorello La Guardia.

Update: very funny. The narrator, Elizabeth Merriwether, was great, as were all the key players (and the rabbits). Ya gotta love a play where someone cries out "Frank Lloyd Wright has a crooked penis!", and where a running joke is Single Use-Zoning. The group has done other pieces.

Hmm, I think I need a WWJJD T-Shirt.