Re: Review of "Bellona, Destroyer of Cities"

An experience it was indeed.  To have coincidentally been in NY when this was on was great.

'The Kitchen' is a small theatre on the edge of Manhattan at W19th St between 10th and 11th Avenues.  It probably sits a couple of hundred and was sold out the night I was there (Friday 9 April).

The set was largely made up of a domestic interior / apartment block, some of which was out of sight of the audience, but covered by cameras which were live streamed onto three large screens arranged vertically on the right of the stage (the director Jay Scheib later pointed out that this meant that every audience member got a slightly different version of the play depending on what they could see happening and their view of the screens ). This set-up worked well for me - sometimes there were close-ups, sometimes stuff you would otherwise miss.

The play started somewhat unexpectedly - and, for the uninitiated, probably somewhat confusingly - with a careening astronaut.  An orgy followed. It then settled into the arrival of Kid in Bellona and her (I'll come back to that) meeting with the various inhabitants.  It's been some years since I read Dhalgren and parts of the novel came back to me as they were enacted on stage.  Scenes were put together without too much sense of narrative flow although there was a fair amount of life with the Richards which anchored the story to some extent (ending with the lift incident of course).  Bellona was effectively portrayed as a city of endless options and danger.  Performances were pretty good on the whole, especially Caleb Hammond as Tak and Tanya Selvaratnam as Mrs Richards.  The play actuall
 y got quite a few laughs - Dhalgren as comedy?

Afterwards I was further blessed by a Q&A with Chip, Jay Scheib and Farai Chideya.  Chip expressed himself very happy with the production - if not astonished that it had been attempted at all.  He said that this was the third time he had seen it and that it had improved as time had gone on (one got the sense that this was a very adaptable production).  He was asked about Kid being played by a woman (the fine Sarita Choudhury) and expressed himself content on the grounds that the text itself allows for the next Kid to be an 'Oriental' female. It was noted that this lost something in terms of the sexuality presented in the novel but he didn't seen bothered and in the context of the play I don't think it mattered too much.  

The only part of the production he bridled at was a mention of 'speculative fiction' which he said had meaning for a few years at the end of the 60s / start of the 70s - but he preferred to use 'science fiction' again now. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
There's another review here from Time Out New York and I've posted a couple of photos I took of the Q&A with Chip to the Yahoo Groups website.  Close observation of one of them will reveal the back of the head of audience member Michael Stipe.

http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/theater/84410/bellona-destroyer-of-cities-at-the-kitchen-theater-review 

Keith (who got back to the UK on what turns out to have been the last flight into London Heathrow more or less)

On 7 Apr 2010, at 19:58, Zvi Gilbert wrote:

> Unfortunately, that's illegal without the permission of the
> theatre/director/producer... but I sure would love to see it. It sounds like
> quite the experience. --Z
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> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Samuel-Santo DiPietro
> <[email protected]>wrote:
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> > OMG i pray someone records it on their cellphone and creates a torrent for
> > this!!
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> > To: [email protected]
> > From: [email protected]
> > Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2010 14:32:35 -0400
> > Subject: [delany-list] Review of "Bellona, Destroyer of Cities"
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> > Damn, wish I were there to see it!
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> > From today's New York Times.
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> > http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/theater/reviews/07bellona.html?hpw
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> > I wonder if they have a lobby stand selling copies of Dhalgren... :)
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> > --Zvi
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> > == Posted to delany-list, hosted at yahoo groups ==
> > == A mailing list for the discussion of the works of Samuel R. Delany.
> > ==Yahoo! Groups Links
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