Hell is a heated pool.
Sartre said hell is other people. The sly dance-theater mavericks Leigh Garrett and Katie Workum say hell is not knowing you're in hell when you're with other people?even when you are lying poolside on a patch of Miami concrete and they are blocking your sun.
Garrett and Workum's Miami Project, which played last month at GAle GAtes et. al. in DUMBO, inflicts the stark existentialism of Sartre's No Exit on a small crew of chronically innocent Americans, with horrendously (and hilariously) untragic results. The dance-play's Florida vacationers know how to convert every big thought into a smaller one. Self-obsessed and essentially immune to one another, they are incapable of feeling terrible about anything, not even their back-serves or the fact that they are in hell. Actually, they don't realize their vacation will last for eternity. Having endured a lengthy selection process for this gated condominium complex, they feel lucky.
Before the lights come up, the Miami Project efficiently lays out its conceit when one of the adult-fun-camp's activity coordinators (Garrett, with Rob Reinis her partner in crime) starts screening audience members for admittance. Pencil and clipboard in hand, she inquires, "Fire and brimstone?for or against?"
Arrayed in a tight row of color-coordinated deck chairs against the back wall of the theater are our hapless survey winners. The girl in pink (Workum) works on her tan, a mirror scorching her reddening face. The J-Lo doll next to her (Nicole Berger), in baby-blue velour jogging suit, works on her orgasm, neck cords twanging. To her right an aggro tennis player (Will Rawls), then a lady with the zip-locked mouth of the undead (Felicia Ballos), a muscle-shirted Lothario (Nathan Phillips) and a surfer jonesing for tv (Terry Dean Bartlett). When the sunbathers move in unison, they resemble a Busby Berkeley bathing-beauty chorus, but scaled down for fit. Their routine climaxes when they cross their ankles.
Each character has a cameo in which they dip into their shallow souls and fish out an epiphany?about their too-brief lives, their eternal future, their relentless hunger for a protein shake. The rest of the players either form a chorus that amplifies the soloist's ruminations and revelations or demonstrate, through little intrigues of their own, that they could care less about other people's dramas. The stage buzzes smartly with plots and subplots.
The Miami Project mines a similar vein of Americana as another current dance-theater work: Twyla Tharp's Movin' Out, a wordless musical to 28 Billy Joel tunes that opened on Broadway in October and also spotlights sports gear, yet with a good deal less sprightliness and wit. Tharp's choreography is one cliche after another but also so high voltage that you may be too rattled to notice.
Movin' Out tells the story of a few 60s-era Long Island kids who like bright cars and Joel-style rock 'n' roll, get sent to 'Nam, lose one of their buddies, come home wrecked, take up drugs and s&m and grow wiser. Wiser about jogging. The numbers tell it all: The show is sixth in Broadway ticket sales, with 10,314 people, on average, attending each week, at $40 to $100 a head. In February, the touring Movin' Out sets off.
As with the shows of so many of Garrett and Workum's inventive, struggling peers, Miami Project had a three-week run. The tickets were $12 a pop and the house, in a space that will close next week because it is drowning in debt, seated 60. It did not receive one review or one notice in the Times, the paper of record, which so far has expended some 11,500 words (not counting the weekly capsules) on Movin' Out.
Like the Miami Project's gatekeepers, who have the sales skills to get a person to want to go to hell, Movin' Out makes you forget for its duration that you have a better time singing along to the Joel tunes at your local Food Dynasty, free. Movin' Out insists that it matters. When a show really does, you aren't inventing ad copy while you watch. Yet when a show isn't screaming about its merits (it simply has a bunch), everyone is free to stay away. Here's the tragedy: Nearly everyone does.
Katie Workum's Massholia runs Thursdays in July at the Belt Theater, 336 W. 37th (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-592-1749. Leigh Garrett pilots her Carol Burnett-style variety show to Galapagos on Thurs., July 24. 70 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe and Kent Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-384-4586.