Clive, yet another of the New Group’s tedious wallows in depravity,
exists in a ethereal trance—as if to emulate the drug-infused perspective
of its eponymous anti-hero, who would seem to be some kind of rising or falling
pop singer—and is performed in such a listless, urgency-free, mostly muttered
manner that it’s practically somnambulistic. Playwright Jonathan Marc
Sherman’s “take” on Bertolt Brecht’s Baal, it
features director Ethan Hawke in the
title role and Sherman in the supporting cast. Neither fellow does either of
his jobs particularly well, and when it’s over (or when you’re done with it,
whichever comes first), you barely have the sense of having watched a play at
all, but rather of having crossed briefly through a room in which a lot of
bongs were bubbling just out of sight and a bunch of people on fumes only
thought they were doing something meaningful. This is self-indulgence of the
highest and lowest order and best ignored.
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