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The Shed’s First Play Is Not for Most People. And That’s Fine

The Shed’s First Play Is Not for Most People. And That’s OK

(Bloomberg) -- After a week of opening parties for the Shed, its first original play, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, premiered on Saturday night.

As a line snaked around the hall of the $475 million building’s sixth floor, Alex Poots, the organization’s artistic director could be overheard telling a companion that this was the first time they’d ever tried to get 500 people into the black-box Griffin Theater.

“We’re obviously still working things out,” he said, gesturing to the line of people shuffling uncertainly as they tried to find their seats.

The show itself, in contrast, was a confident statement about the Shed’s artistic priorities.

Written by Anne Carson, who’s possibly the only classicist writer in the world who could convincingly be described as famous, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy stars the actor Ben Whishaw and the soprano Renée Fleming. Partly spoken, partly sung, and augmented by piped-in recordings of the actors’ voices, the play/poem is a riff on Euripides’ 5th century B.C. play Helen, in which Helen of Troy never actually makes it to Troy, landing in Egypt instead. It’s a play that considers the events of The Iliad from Helen’s perspective— this is a woman who was plucked from her home, separated from her daughter, and brought to a foreign land against her will.

Carson uses Euripides’ plot as a springboard, tying Helen’s fate to that of another doomed beauty, Marilyn Monroe, whose birth name was Norma Jeane. (“Rape/ is the story of Helen,/ Persephone,/ Norma Jeane,/ Troy./ War is the context/ and God is a boy.”)

The Shed’s First Play Is Not for Most People. And That’s Fine

Set on New Year’s Eve, the play is directed by the veteran Katie Mitchell with a set by Alex Eales that’s meant to evoke a 1960s, Mad Men-style typing pool, a choice that’s as satisfying visually as it is confusing thematically.

Whishaw dominates the majority of the dialogue during the play’s first half. (There’s no intermission.) Eventually, Fleming begins to weigh in, mostly in song, the music for which was scored by Paul Clark. As the evening wears on, Whishaw slowly slips out of his suit and into a facsimile of Marilyn Monroe’s famous white dress.

This is a play that could conservatively be called experimental. Judging from the audience’s tepid reaction on its first night of previews, it was a type of experimentation that was definitely not for everyone.

The Shed’s First Play Is Not for Most People. And That’s Fine

It’s a show that uses a classical paradigm to address issues of misogyny that are both age-old and depressingly current. “It’s a disaster to be a girl,” sings Fleming. The fact that Whishaw, a man, is often the messenger of the burdens of womanhood is, Carson says in the show’s press notes, a natural choice. “I don’t think of Ben Whishaw as primarily a male actor,” she says. “He is iridescent. The needle jumps.” And indeed, there are a few moments of clarity where Whishaw manages to deliver the message forcefully. In other instances, though, his transition from a suit to a dress feels more arbitrary.

Given that the Shed has decided to carve out a niche in New York’s cultural firmament by commissioning new works in a variety of mediums, the relative complexity of Norma Jeane Baker of Troy should, to some degree at least, be expected. With its first play, the Shed has already achieved what it set out to do: It’s created something utterly new and backed it up with enough star power to draw an audience.

More on the Way

There’s more on the way. Bjork will premiere a “staged concert” with a chorus and cast of musicians in the building’s colossal McCourt Theater (May 6- June 1, though the Shed’s website says it’s already sold out), and a new “futuristic kung fu musical” called Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise, set to songs by the pop star Sia, will debut on June 22 and run through July 27.

The Shed’s First Play Is Not for Most People. And That’s Fine

On the more esoteric side, there’s currently a musical/artistic collaboration by the composers Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich with the artist Gerhard Richter that runs through June 2, while a documentary about the Colombian artist Beatriz Gonzalez’s installation of 8,597 tombstones in a cemetery in Bogota premieres on June 19.

The Shed isn’t the only arts organization in New York that’s paying for new things, of course. The Metropolitan Opera spends millions every year on new productions; American Ballet Theater has an in-house choreographer who stages new pieces. Performa, a performance-art biennial, always commissions new work, and, depending on how you look at it, the entirety of the Broadway Theater District (revivals aside) is based on a commission structure.

But the Shed is an experiment in new art commissions that’s larger in scope, scale, and, arguably, ambition than any of its cultural peers. By definition, it’s engaged in a process of patronage that’s going to be huge and swing widely. Even if its experiments occasionally miss the mark, they’re worthy of attention.

As New York continues to debate the merits of Hudson Yards, with these new commissions the Shed is making a forceful case for its own legitimacy. A play like Norma Jeane Baker of Troy will never be Hamilton, but it’s not intended to be. New York, after all, already has Hamilton; Norma Jeane Baker is something entirely new.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.