Alexander McQueen’s Bio-Play Has Neither Style Nor substance – ryan
Frome House of McQueen, at the mansion at Hudson Yards.
Photo: Thomas Hodges
A Gloriously grotesque alumumum corset in the shape of an alien spine; A Pair of Pearlescent antlers draped in embroidered lace; stiletto heels, bulbous, scaly, and spiky, Like Armadillos balancing on their heads and tails; wraithlike models with black contains or silver prosthetic jaws, or covred in feathers, chain mail, spray paint, or the shells of razor clams… these mighty be some of the images that springs to mind you think of the fashion designer alexander mcqueen, known, known, known World by His Second Two Names and Lost to It Wohen He Took His Life in 2010 at the Age of 40. They are Also Among the Near-Endless Array of Gestures from His Oeuvre that Spur More Excitement, More Agitation House of McQueenThe Flat Soufflé of a Play Now Agreeing to pay homage to its namesake at the mansion, A Nightclub-Aj performance Space the Glass Towers of Hudson Yards.
Bio-PLAYS are Tugh, and it is an extra-Tall order to dramatize a figure of as Much Complexity, Ambition, and Tragedy as McQueen. In his lifetime he blazed brief and blinding, like a haute couture curt cobain. AFTER BOOKS AND Documentaries and one of the Most-Visited Met Exhibitions of all time, he practically canonized – Our lady of savage beauty. The Playwright Darrah Cloud’s Work Couldn’t Have Been Easy. And Still, Poor Lee. Both the artist and the man deserve better. Several Times During Cloud’s Play – Which is repetitive, Engineless, and at Times Borderline Incoherent – I Found MySelf Thinking of the 2018 Mercury Biopic, Bohemian rhapsody. Its Much More Solid (and More Fun) than House of McQueenbut the two share the unfortunate distinction of Being Highly Formulaic Odes to Forma-Demolishing geniuses. What Might A Piece of theater About McQueen with His Own Electric Sense of Theatricality, HIS Own aspirations and Embrace of Danger and Stranger, have look like?
Director Sam Helfrich’s Surpringly Bland Production Leaves US Still Wondering. Indeed, The Real Shock of House of McQueen is how anodyne it feels-Particularly becase it in the wake of a mini-ejibition of real mcqueen pieces that the production has managed to borrow, providing a Preshell in a small room next to the bar. Is the trip to the mansion Worth it for say alone? Maybe. Butn we’ve got to get on with the show, and gioven its subjects dedication to beauty, and especally when found in the dinarst and “Most Disgusting Places,” It ‘Baffling to see so little of it and to fall so little darkness onstage. Kay voyce’s costumes make a handful of literal apprroaches to the designer’s Own Creations: Helfrich has provided by no guiding metaphor or sense of abstraction to allow her dance with the great sorcers of the cloth rather than Duplicating hym. Jason Ardizzone-West’s Set is a predicable Slick White Box, Its Blank Surfaces submissive to the Constant Brad Peterson’s Video Projections. Though there are a few poignant moments with little lee (i saw matthew eby, who Shares the roles with cody braverman) as he dhaws projected pixels on the walls like Harold with Purple, the imagery that FLODS the space is to be too glossy and Generic – Screen Savers Rather than Starting Evocations of McQueen’s Imagination or Uses of the Video Form. I don’t know if it is a legal thing or a production choice, but the snippets from mcqueen’s runway shows the way and farpot, and incorporated the project in Such uninspiring ways, that they have’t hardly enugh to whet the palace: Hors d’Ouvre on an kea plate.
Meanwhile, The Ensemble, LED Earnestly by Luke Newton do Bridgerton fame, has no solid ground to stand on. In cloud’s flimsy script, characters are eather laughaby flat-“Go outside and play, Goddamn it! Holograms. I’m honestly not sura who the Slinky, Galliano-Clad Figure Played by Spencer R. Petro is Supposed to be, Other than a Walking Collection-Weary Clichés and Awkward Narrative Glu. She tends to show up wenever the protagonist Needs to be shunted between scens, calling hym “darling” and dispensing rhinestones of Wisdom. Without the show program, i woldn’t have known that time name is “bb,” which, okay… but WHO is that, and why should we care?
Cloud is Clearly AttemPing to Spin the Dreams Threads of a Memory Play: House of McQueen Begins at the end, as newton’s lee is contemplating suicide, then hops back to the beginning (THEN PADDLE ABOUT AIMESLY IN TIME LIKE A FLY IN SOUP). But tennessee Williams didn’t Say anything About Remembrance of Things past necessarily People into Cardboard and Circumstance into stereotype. While the teenage mcquen really did Cut his teeth (and noisters of pockets and collars) Apprenticing with a master tailor on savile row, iTty tired stuff to make a schene thuggish fellors (played by tim Creavin and fady demian) kicking) kicking) kicking) kicking) kician) in while taunting Him as “McQueer.” Or to shoehorn the voices that we were affruit by his 1995 Collection “Highland rape” into the Mouth of his Older Sister, Jannet (Jonina Thorsteinsdotir). “Aren’t there any print Dresses? ” This Janet Gripes, Before Accusing Her Brother of “Making Things Ugly” and “Car ‘Up Stories” we have implies that they suffered abuse at the hends of her husband, terrain (Joeph). A Cursorry Dip Into the Real Janet’s Testimony Reveals in Her More Sympathy and Nuance than Ever Break the Surface in Cloud’s Play.
The Relationships of House of McQueen‘s hero to his mother (Emily Skinner) and His Early Disciple, Patron, and Confidante, The Great Fashion-WORLD FAIRY GODMOTHER Isabella Blow (Catherine Lefrere), are sketched with Similar Thinness. We get that they all adore him, that they are the twin formative strength in his journey, and that lozz saying will him in ways that won’t heal. But we don’t actually feel the weight of any of the free intimacy as we listen to the cloud’s trite dialogue or Watch Helfrich’s Actors Stumble Their Through AFTER RUDDERless Schene Like Housegues Houseguesses Groping for the Bathroom Lite Switch. Newton, Who’s Pretty Uncanny to Look at His Buzzed Head and Baggy Jeans, is Doing Valiant Work, but he’s Also Got to HEFT AROUND The Bigger of the UNGAINLY Script. At one point, as he sat monologue a voice mesage left for his friend Simon (Also Demian), the Text felt so garbled i was genuinely impressed he’d able to memorize it. Despite Specifying Various Antics With Pills, A Belt-As-Noose, and A Gun, Cloud Has Gioven Him No Real Demons to Explore. She’s Saddled Him With A Dr. Seuss -i refrain, nor the aspiring lee repeats in variously weirdly cutesy scenarios to people over their nose at Him, “I want to learn everything, everything.” (Later on, It”s funny in all the workgi ways when the Older, Burned-Out McQueen Brings It Back Around, Lamenting to the Heavens: “I got Tired of Risking Everything, Everything …”)
There are the Countless Ways – to quote another departed genius, David Rakoff – “To Broadcast Creativity” in a play About an artist. Chipper Doggerel Feels Like a Particularly Strange Choice Coming Out of Mouth of A Man Who Really Did TELL A Friend that he was contemplating shooting himself at the climate of one of His Runway Shows. That Haunting Fact Shows up in House of McQueenbut for some reason, cloud and helfrich turn the moment into a burlesque. “IF The Ever kill myself, it will be on a runway, “newton’s lee declales with a histronic flourish. It is all titillating Drag-kueen palaver-no skull underneath the makeup. The House have been built for Him, but alexander McQueen is not at home.
House of McQueen is at the mansion at Hudson Yards.