As the title might suggest, the list includes various productions of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” The other selections cover a decidedly diverse range, including Disney’s “Bambi”; the 1975 Martha Rosler video “Semiotics of the Kitchen”; Lydia Lunch’s 1980 jazz-punk album “Queen of Siam”; Rachel Whiteread’s Turner Prize-winning sculpture “House”; and a Thrillist article about drinking a gallon of water a day for 30 days. Also listed as a major source — though I could not spot it onstage — is the psychedelic Japanese horror film “House,” which Manohla Dargis, in her review in The New York Times, described as “delirious, deranged, gonzo or just gone, baby, gone.”
None of those words apply to this new “House,” a high-concept, low-reward aggregate of undigested references. Conceived by 11 people, including nine actors and director Rubén Polendo, the show may have been exciting to create — but the experience is less rewarding for viewers.
The general idea is to evoke the changing ideas of house and home — a distinction the show does not make as evocatively, or succinctly, as Burt Bacharach and Hal David did in 1964. The ensemble wear snazzy matching outfits of black pants, mustard-yellow blazers and white rubber boots, and move around and inside of a house in the middle of the stage. The best idea of the evening is that the domestic and public spheres bleed in and out of one another: This particular abode is all frame and no walls. (Cast members Alex Hawthorn, Justin Nestor and Scott Spahr, as well as Polendo, are credited with “lead architectural install.”)
Like the previous Mitu production “Remnant,” “House” mixes live performance with video and sophisticated sound design. Audience members wear headphones the entire time, immersed in a soundscape in which the actors’ voices are processed and looped through electronic effects, or mixed live over the backing tracks for songs penned by rising writer and musician Ada Westfall (who is also in the cast).
The company owes a clear debt to the Wooster Group, but “House” does not move the needle forward from the benchmarks that experimental, multimedia-driven troupe set decades ago.
At times the actors quote from interviews they conducted, giving the show an “of the moment” quality with references to migration and displacement. There are snippets of vintage commercials, perhaps in an attempt to evoke the once vivid American dream, now supplanted by tales of mortgage default.
Eventually there is synchronized dancing, because why not?
“House” also borrows lines from “The Cherry Orchard,” though that play is mostly used as a referential beacon for the audience. The result is not as intellectually or emotionally engaging as the recent Chekhov remixes, including “Life Sucks” and “Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow,” which tackled the Russian author’s work with various degrees of success. But at least they tried.
As spooky as the high-tech mood of “House” can occasionally be (and it’s almost always when Westfall sings), the show mostly feels as if nobody could decide what it wanted to say and how, leading to an awkward mix of aesthetic ambition and unchallenging blandness.
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Additional Information:
“House (or how to lose an orchard in 90 minutes or less)”
Through Sept. 8 at MITU580, Brooklyn; 646-543-6488, theatermitu.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.