Jake Greenberg
Professor Sheehan
IDC, Arts of NYC
Due Date: 10/2/13
All the Faces of the Moon (at Joe’s Pub): Review
I walked into Joe’s Pub with nothing but skepticism; as they took my ticket and I walked into the little theater, my entire view changed. Upon entering, the set up took you back to an earlier time in the city where the local bars would sponsor, or at least support, local start-ups and it was impossible not to feel a bit giddy. The crowd felt intimate just like a small crowded bar, but the man on stage was no rookie; he was calm, cool, and collected as if he controlled the audience on puppet strings. As I sat down in a comfortable booth, much different from the uncomfortable bar stools at a real pub I was able to order restaurant quality food as my eyes became hooked to the stage. I was about to hear a monologue, and yet every one of my senses was on edge.
I had never been to anything remotely close to this performance. It had the general crowd you would find at an art gallery or Broadway show, an older and seemingly abstractly sophisticated bunch, but it felt so welcoming that my friend Rebecca and I, mere college students, didn’t feel the slightest bit out of place. After looking past this disheveled but confident character on stage, one could see the main purpose for being here, the piece of art labeled, “Saturn Is a Father Devouring His Children”. Now that my attention turned to the seemingly correct place I began to study the painting, trying to make sense of this innocent looking picture with such a dark title. As I continued to scan it I suddenly squinted, as I wasn’t sure what I had just seen. After shaking the cobwebs clear I was able to convince myself that what I saw was really there; a holy, yet ominous pair of solid black eyes peered from the top right corner of the easel onto the baby in a set of hands. Chills ran through my body as the title now made sense and reverberated in my head. And then, just like that Mike Daisey, the performer, began to speak.
As the theatre set the mood, Mr. Daisey’s voice set the scene. He began to discuss current events worldwide and then slowly became more specific until he reached New York City as the scene of his discussion. The discussion began to be about the recent Mayoral race and poking fun at past mayors in a very informal, but very romanticized way. I felt myself changing slowly from skeptic to addict as I was dragged into the story. As previously stated, I have never been to anything of this sort so my assumptions of a discussion of the painting seemed logically to be what would happen. While that thought still rang in my head, the ring became more and more distant as if my ears wouldn’t let anything take away from his capturing story and voice. It was a room of approximately 150 people, yet it felt as spellbinding and intimate as being told a ghost story by your friend over a fire in the dark woods.
Regardless of Mr. Daisey’s political views as a whole, about 30 minutes into the show it was clear his story had focused even deeper onto a character he saw as somewhat of a tyrant or puppeteer, Michael Bloomberg. It was at this point where he began to go on three or four different rants, somehow weaving in such obscure characters from “The Grey Lady”, whom lives underground, to Bruce Willis and Die Hard, into one giant story about a bad guy labeled as: “The Short Man”. It was here that I turned to my friend in complete confusion wondering how a talk about NYC current events could branch into this fairy tale. We shook our heads together and then focused back on the show as if under a spell. Although neither of us knew what was going on, we couldn’t turn our heads from the stage, it was mesmerizing.
In order to spare you from me going on a rant of my own, I will make his complicated story similar and concede that The Small Man is metaphorically, and at the end admittedly, Mayor Bloomberg. He had Mr. Daisey’s wife captured at the top of the Freedom Tower but with a bit of Bloomberg’s ego and a lot of Daisey’s story made magic, the couple escapes and the story ends. Mike Daisey stands up, points in the direction of the painting, thanks the crowd, and leaves. As I left the theatre with my head cocked, mouth slightly ajar, and brain racing I could not get my head around what had just happened. I had just witnessed one of the most aesthetically enhancing events of my lifetime, but what about the painting? Wasn’t the whole point of this monologue to discuss the artwork?
It took me days, some of them spent thinking hard about the performance and others spent trying to push the show out of my head, but finally I came to an understanding; Mr. Daisey was being more than a storyteller, he was being an interpreter. Art as a whole is to be looked at in many different ways, sometimes even abstractly, but I had been too caught up looking head on at what was going on. Like the dance performance of The Metamorphosis compared to the actual book by Franz Kafka, it was meant to be how this group of people felt by the original piece. That was what Mike was able to do. Rather than speak and describe the tangible characteristics of the painting, he took the viewers on a journey into his mind and the story that this painting spoke to him. It was vague and it was abstract, but that was the beauty of it. For Mr. Daisey, Saturn and Mr. Bloomberg are one and the same. Instead of simply giving his opinion that Bloomberg is to power hungry, he eloquently interprets a painting in which the “evil” devours his children, which is a clear sign of trying to obtain more and more power and ties that into a story with Bloomberg as the main character.
This was an outstanding performance in every aspect. The scene, mood, and feel of the monologue tapped into every sense and left them pleased and wanting more. I do not believe that any performance at this theatre and by Mike Daisey are the same but it wasn’t the specific content, rather, how it was expressed, that made this show such a success and thus any show being performed by him should take you consideration.
