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"Let the dance begin." Off-off-Broadway Euripides, Thebes in a grungy New York garage, a recording of the theatrical experience means "an hour and a half of being against the wall." Actors warm up, patrons settle in. The interactive group-grope fuses the two sides, half utopia and half excruciation, a writhing, granular image sliced in the middle. (As the mock-orgy winds down and the drama takes hold, audience members are seen sheepishly putting their clothes back on.) Dionysus (William Finley) versus Pentheus (William Shepherd), from repartee to seduction to disembowelment: "You are a man and I'm a god, this is a tragedy so the odds are against you." The Performance Group directed by Richard Schechner aims for visceral confrontation, no one better to film it than young Brian De Palma. (His split-screen amalgamates footage from different performances, complementary, contrasting, out of synch, mirrored.) Flaming Creatures is close, "Springtime for Hitler" closer still. The immemorial and the faddish, building to "one single mindless body gone mad by the politics of ecstasy." Starkly controlled anarchy, the grisliness at the end of the Age of Aquarius, a perfect expression of the place and time. "Good evening, sir, may I take you to your death?" The punchline is the continuum of divine-authoritarian cant, it might as well be a presidential stump speech that bursts into the streets with camera in tow. "No more rituals—we want the real thing!" De Palma of course drops the whole megillah into the "Be Black Baby!" sequence of Hi, Mom! In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |