Ecco Porco

One does meet an odd assortment of people at 12-step meetings, especially at PS 122 in the East Village. Hello Nietzsche. Hello Marge Simpson. Hello Orson Welles and Warren Beaty. This meeting of animations anonymous is the premise of the nearly epic-length production ECCO PORCO by Mabou Mines.

Each of these characters and more, all performance addicts, undergo multiple transformations. As such the nonlinear nature of the theatrical experience is a performance for performance sake. And this ritualistic 12-step meeting reinvents classical theatre by focusing on social ills, by engaging the dialectics of discourse, and by effecting a catharsis of sorts.

Mabou Mines creator, Lee Breuer and his collaborators are nothing if not articulate and versed in the semiotics of contemporary thought from deconstructionism to post modernism. So much so that the evening lapses into their self-indulgence, just what one dreads of these 12-step meetings. Be that as it may, the performance is actively addictive, utilizing a vast range of performance styles and techniques. There are nearly life size puppets, video projections, Balinese and Kabuki style dances, and the ensemble techniques of Grotowski’s Poor Theatre. The scenes shift from the search for the dog Rose, to Stalin’s assassination of Meyerhold, ad nauseum. In ECCO PORCO fragments are presented as whole pieces. And the whole piece is a fragment.

What is it about? Porco, the little pig, suggests that it’s about character. "Give it time and you’ll see it looking for something. A way out. A cross. A bullet." One is reminded of Mabou Mines early productions of Beckett’s plays and fixated by the animations they now create.

That’s This Week Off Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.