Review: Nayatt School Redux, Coronet Theatre

Nearly twenty years after The Wooster Group first produced Nayatt School, an extraordinary performance piece framed around TS Eliot’s The Cocktail Party, they present it at the Coronet Theatre in an evolved form as Nayat School Redux, directed by Elizabeth LeCompte and devised together with the company.

Even as the show begins, it takes a while for the lighting state to alter; as if it’s taking its time. And time and change are at the core of this extraordinary production. Kate Valk, a central figure in the Wooster Group, tells us that, in an effort to archive the performance from all that time ago, for which they have only incomplete recordings, they have decided to re-enact segments and piece them together with original footage and sound; attempting to fill in the gaps of their knowledge and make a whole. It’s a revelatory project that discloses knowledge about the past, our present and the instability of memory and understanding across time. Prepare yourself for a bemusing but completely compelling confusion experiment…

There’s a beautiful sense of haunting throughout this contemporary reinterpretation, with the figure of Spalding Gray, founder member and creative force of the company, present in both video and reminiscence throughout, despite his untimely death by his own hand in 2004. Valk sits front and centre, nearly touching the audience. A set of record decks are on the bench before her and a fragmented version of the original set is behind. It includes the frame of a tent from the original show, here without its cover and indicating loss, while the space of the original performance is taped out across the floor, soon to be inhabited in vital, live action. A video screen behind her displays original footage of the performance and she synchronises her speech with that of Gray within it, giving new life to past events.

As the show goes on, extracts from the original play we’re seeing are performed by a cast in parallel time. They are dressed similarly to those in the film, yet as if slightly misremembered: reminiscent but not identical, with some clothing suggestive of labcoats, as they perform this experiment. The excerpts are fragmentary and veer from monotone, static delivery where words start to become meaningless, to chaotic cocktail parties, where everyone goes wild and glasses are strewn across the table and floor. Moments of humour amidst the bewilderment are welcome and downright delectable, beautifully contrasting the straight-faced insanity of performance art with acknowledgment of its absurdity. 

It’s weird. There’s no two ways about that. But it’s incredibly compelling to watch this reconstruction and deconstruction of a thing. We lean in to what we’re shown, coming to recognise what’s missing and understand the ephemerality of meaning as we see how understandings and interpretations have changed across time. 

The ending comes with no clear conclusion, which seems appropriate: as time goes on in our lives memory and interpretation will inevitably alter, as in this piece, changing whatever we’ve experienced into new forms. The company fuse past and present with artistic alchemy, catalysing an entirely new production. What’s been created here is not only a celebration of the groundbreaking work of the past, it’s an addition birthed directly from the very form of its template material, with its own personality and being. And it’s utterly fascinating.

Performers: Ari Fliakos, Andrew Maillet, Michaela Murphy, Suzzy Roche, Scott Shepherd, Maura Tierney, Kate Valk, Omar Zubair

Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte
Composed by The Company
Sound & Original Music Eric Sluyter & Omar Zubair
Lighting by David Sexton
Set by Elizabeth LeCompte
Original Video and 16mm Nayatt School film by Ken Kobland
Additional Video by Wladimiro Woyno, Irfan Brkovic, Andrew Maillet, Yudam Hyung Seok Jeon
Assistant Director: Michaela Murphy
Costumes by Elizabeth LeCompte & Enver Chakartash
Dramaturg: Matthew Dipple

xx plays at xx until xx.