NEW YORK, NY.- Once, when theater-maker Phelim McDermott was a child, he missed out on the show of his dreams.
It was an Aladdin-like play called Billys Wonderful Kettle in Manchester, England, and the 7-year-old McDermott was so excited the night before, he got a stomachache that kept him from going. He often thought about that show in the years that followed. In his mind, it was a thing of magic the best piece of theater he never saw.
Ive spent my whole life trying to make a show as good as Billys Wonderful Kettle, McDermott says in Tao of Glass, his fragmentary, fantastical and often moving tribute to composer Philip Glass and the power of art to flow through our lives, as he describes it, like a river.
If McDermott hasnt matched the idealistic image he has of Kettle, he certainly has made an earnest effort with Improbable, the inventive theater company he co-founded in 1996. Some of his most inspired creations have been stagings of Glass operas especially the ritualistic set pieces of Satyagraha and the juggling spectacle of Akhnaten.
McDermott truly gets Glass music, and so can act as a kind of visual translator. That, we learn in Tao of Glass, which opened at NYU Skirball on Thursday, comes from an affection that runs deep, and far into the past.
Here, for the first time, McDermott and Glass have built something together from scratch written, co-directed (with Kirsty Housley) and performed by McDermott, with an original score by Glass. On its most basic level, the production is the story of a show that never happened, McDermott says, an adaptation of Maurice Sendaks In the Night Kitchen. But eventually, Tao becomes the story of its own creation.
The show is metatheatrical from the start. As the lights go down, McDermott is in the aisle, carrying a Skirball tote bag on his shoulder, pretending to look for his seat in the dark. Then a spotlight shines on him, and he looks out at the audience in shocked horror, playing out a bad dream many have. The comedic moment past, he begins, This is my favorite bit.
McDermott is an effortlessly endearing, self-deprecating host, so passionate when speaking about Glass music that hes reminiscent of the Man in Chair from The Drowsy Chaperone, a narrator with an infectious delight for his favorite Broadway cast album.
Over a series of nonlinear, discursive vignettes, McDermott illustrates a vision of reality, laid out by psychologist Arnold Mindell, on three levels: Consensus Reality, Dreamland and Essence. The goal is to experience what Mindell calls Deep Democracy, the state of all three levels activated at once. And that provides something of an outline for how Tao is presented, down to the concentric rings that hang above or sit on the stage in Fly Davis design.
On the first level, Consensus Reality, Tao has the appearance of a workaday one-man show, with McDermott sharing memories and fondly miming Glass conducting with his hair at the keyboard during early performances. In the second half, McDermott is joined by three puppeteers as the scenes becomes dreamier, drifting for what feels like too long before returning to the initial focus on music the Essence, the Tao which cannot be said.
Your tolerance for this might depend on your relationship with Glass music. If you think of it as an extension of his Eastern-inspired meditative practice, everything here is of a piece: McDermotts obsessions with Laotzu, the I Ching and the Rig Veda weave naturally with the slowly transforming, churning arpeggios that are Glass trademark. If not, the digressions into states of being could come off as a bit silly.
Among the stories McDermott shares are memories of the nights he drove his family mad while he played Glassworks on repeat; of using that album in his first professional theater gig; of the time he met Sendak, a grumpy, gay Oscar the Grouch; of losing his cool over the destruction of a beloved, ahem, glass table. Interspersed are interludes about Eastern philosophy, flotation tanks and the practice of pretending to be in a coma.
With an aesthetic that is whimsical but not twee, McDermott and his fellow performers David Emmings, Avye Leventis and Sarah Wright conjure a shadow play of In the Night Kitchen, a fantasia that transforms briefly into a silhouette of Glass at the keyboard, and bring to life additional characters with, for example, surprisingly human sheets of tissue paper and bunraku puppetry.
There is a version of Tao call it the best piece of theater we never saw that would have featured Glass playing piano alongside the action onstage. But early in development, the idea was shot down by his manager; Glass just didnt have the time.
But his score is a substantial, crucial contribution. This is late Glass far from the echt minimalist sound of Glassworks, McDermotts obsession performed by a quartet of percussionist Chris Vatalaro (the shows music director), clarinetist Jack McNeill, violinist Laura Lutzke and pianist Katherine Tinker.
There is experimentation with found-object percussion, and recent Glass touches including colorful texture, expressive shifts in harmony and soundtracklike tone painting. McDermotts childhood memories are matched by naively excited music; the flotation tank, by a soporific etude; the simulated coma, by a melody so shapeless yet alluring that it could have been written by Erik Satie.
Glass does appear briefly, in the form of a Steinway Spirio piano an instrument that can record sound and touch then reproduce it, like an advanced player piano. He tells McDermott that this way, he can be with him onstage like a ghost.
It was a reminder that while Glass, 86, is still with us he was in the theater Thursday, and bowed with the performers he wont always be. But his art will remain, and its through his music that McDermott reaches the Essence level. Culture, McDermott suggests, is the route to our deepest selves.
With a running time of 2 1/2 hours, Tao doesnt make that point quickly. By the end, though, McDermotts scattered thoughts satisfyingly cohere like kintsugi, the Japanese art of rejoining broken pottery pieces with golden lacquer, which he describes near the beginning. Some of his memories reveal a clear, clean image; others are imperfect shards that dont seem to fit. But together, they create something new and beautiful.
Tao of Glass
Through April 8 at NYU Skirball, Manhattan; nyuskirball.org.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.