A NEW AGE OEDIPUS.(Oedipus)(Theater Review)

On January 4, 1968, The New York Review of Books published a curious document. Written by Edmund Wilson, who was then seventy-two years old, and titled "An Open Letter to Mike Nichols," the essay, in epistolary form, was inspired by the revival of Lillian Hellman's 1939 drama "The Little Foxes," which Nichols had just directed. In the piece, Wilson expressed his admiration for Nichols's staging, and, referring to Walter Kerr's New York Times review of "Little Foxes" ("Its one unmistakable message," Kerr wrote, "is that we can have an American National Theater any time we want to"), he proposed that Nichols take up the challenge by producing a cycle of American plays--plays that were distinctly American in subject, history, and tone, and which might, like "Little Foxes," become "stage classics." Wilson submitted a list of suggestions which included A. E. Thomas's stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Anna Cora Mowatt's "Fashion, or Life in New York," and "The Great Divide," by William Vaughn Moody. Most of the plays that Wilson recommended were likely unknown to younger audiences in 1968, let alone in 2005, but that only proved his point: to keep American drama alive, you have to perform it.

Since the publication of Wilson's letter, a number of repertory companies have distinguished themselves in New York--the Negro Ensemble Company, the Classical Theatre of Harlem, and the Classic Stage Company, among them. But although these institutions--like their more famous cousins, the Public Theatre and the Brooklyn Academy of Music--do present works by American playwrights, old and new, they also tend to feature work from Britain and the rest of Europe. The American theatre world, it seems, is often crippled by insecurity about its own talent, once Wilder, Miller, Williams, and Albee have been shuffled across the boards. Judging by his list for Nichols, what Wilson would demand of us if he were writing today is a theatre that deals overtly with the country's great themes: sex, race, and social class. The artists in such a theatre would explore a place where being black or Asian or queer is part of our national identity: America as a ragged quilt of difference. The playlist would include as much Adrienne Kennedy, David Rabe, Richard Foreman, Ed Bullins, and Richard Maxwell as audiences could handle. It would also include the Five Lesbian Brothers, an all-female collective of performer-writers, whose latest work, "Oedipus at Palm Springs," opened recently at the New York Theatre Workshop. (The real American theatre, one hopes, would steer clear of the didacticism that has marred most of the recent theatrical discussions of sex, race, and class--Neil LaBute's "This Is How It Goes," for instance, or the Talking Band's "Belize." It's as if our Puritan strain prevented us from making entertainment out of politics.)

Formed in 1989, the Five Lesbian Brothers put together four full-length plays before "Oedipus," impressionistic performance-based productions that made sport of many aspects of contemporary life, from queer politics to the casual verbal violence of the workplace. In all four plays, the Brothers managed to avoid bathos. They never appeared desperate to be liked, and so they felt free-and made the audience feel free-to risk everything. It's disappointing, then, to find, in the current production, too little of the group's strongest suit: irreverence. With "Oedipus at Palm Springs," the Brothers, it seems, have gone straight.

"Oedipus" is more a television sketch than a play--it would work well as an hour-long film on Showtime. Although the Brothers have maintained some of their trademark subversion, they have subjected it to the constraints of an easily digestible story line. As the play opens, Joni (the fine Babs Davy), a blind caretaker at a lesbian resort in Palm Springs, stands naked, folding towels. With her bristle of salt-and-pepper hair and a long, thin braid decorated with a couple of feathers, Joni is a parody of the kind of back-to-the-land woman who finds meaning in a hawk's cry. (Her blindness is ...