The Wooster Group: Nayatt School Redux review

First staged in 1978, the original version of this work was an explosively influential performance piece from experimental New York collective the Wooster Group. This reworking, now prominently featuring reminiscences from founder-member Kate Valk, is both a celebration of the groundbreaking company’s working process and a heartfelt tribute to creative driving force Spalding Gray, who died in 2004. It is also, unashamedly, a treat for fans who will get a kick from Valk’s revealing anecdotes and the various original props and memorabilia scattered about the set.

Devised by Gray, the company and director Elizabeth LeCompte, the piece is a collage of autobiographical text donated by the cast, footage from the original production and excerpts from TS Eliot’s The Cocktail Party – some of which are flatly sight-read, while others are performed in a wildly heightened style, complete with melodramatic pauses and blood-curdling shrieks. LeCompte stages it all with confidence and clarity, fluidly shifting between fragments. Cast members filter in as the performance goes on, gradually filling the space with chaos.

LeCompte’s stage design partially recreates the original set-up, with a pair of slender tables piled with oversized liquor bottles, turntables and laptops, and a rear wall clad in black foam padding, like a recording studio’s textured soundproofing. A flatscreen TV is suspended centre stage on a scaffold resembling a crucifix, displaying recently restored black-and-white footage from one of the company’s early performances. Video designer Ken Kobland colourises certain elements, enlivening the grainy images with bright pops of pink and green. Sound, by Eric Sluyter and Omar Zubair, smooths over the leaps between blocks of content, with fuzzy, compressed audio blending into slow, sweetly wistful strings and sudden blasts of disco music.

Continues...