Review: RUDE MECHS delivers a striking portrayal of the human condition

Rude Mechs served up stirring, evocative theater this past Thursday in the New York Live Arts installation of their esteemed show, Match-Play. Adapted from Deborah Hay's Bessie award-winning dance, "The Match," the piece infuses Hay's original choreography and score with original text from Rude Mechs' co-founder Kirk Lynn to spark a theatrical study of perception: How does a human being relate to consciousness?

With the audience privy to Hay's script upon seating, the play's start was ambiguous, as we were preemptively directed to notice Cathy, entering simply with the house lights still lit, muttering in a chair. She continued this for six minutes, unaffected by the audience, until the lights finally began to dim. There was a tangible voyeurism in the air, as the three other players (Fiona, Frank & Charles) entered in their own time, shifting the energy of the room. A dynamic quartet, the cast moved through the stage and the text with carefree eccentricity, interacting with the household appliances and each other to defy common boundaries of perception and communication.

As the play progressed, marked by a sleek digital screen noting each scene with stark exactitude, there were moments where absurdity overwhelmed the space. A talking cow and a fifth "roommate" Costello, take part in the players' spheres, enhancing the production's fantastical quality: What is truth and what is perceived truth? Moments of hilarity helped to ease the weight of randomness (Fiona discussing her ex-boyfriends with the audience, illustrated by cats; Frank joyfully celebrating his professed feelings of "paradise" with grand flourish) but ultimately, the penchant for the unpredictable often felt strained, as Brian H Scott's impressive lighting design clued in viewers to apparent shifts in the dialogue. Often times, it felt too planned to appear random and inconsequential.

The moments of dance were the most enjoyable as it helped to inform that which could not be vocally untangled or left to the imagination. All four players are extremely tactile and in touch with their own bodies, which created a stunning array when they explored the space all together. There was an ease of movement within the collective, which is often quite hard to master, and it was refreshing to watch the movement's origination; from the joints, from the head, from the limbs, which conveyed mood and awareness most intrinsically through the passage of time. This could have certainly been expanded further, for it was the sole element of the play that communicated volumes without having to appear arbitrary. It was in these moments that pretense was washed away, and the intangible felt understood and beautifully human.

Photo Credit: Bret Brookshire

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