Watching Michael Smuin’s “Medea” is like freebasing kitsch. From its first image of the heroine wrapped in an enormous purple cape that is smoking — literally — you’re in for something completely over the top.
The San Francisco troupe brought three works, including its late founder’s 1977 version of the Greek myth. The story of Medea’s grisly revenge on her husband, Jason, after leaving her for a younger woman, is told with as much fabric, yet as little clothing as possible. Medea has three different capes; the men wear nothing but thongs.
The lead role is like raw meat to a lion — she gets to strangle her rival onstage. Looking like ballet’s version of Glenn Close, Robin Cornwell nearly pulls it off with crazy intensity as she stalks forward on pointe, churns her cape like a washing machine agitator and gives the audience a diva stare.
Smuin, who won a Tony for “Anything Goes” and died in 2007, had a knack for creating a blatantly theatrical image, particularly the grisly final one.
If his idea of Greek mythology is “Mommie Dearest” meets “Fatal Attraction,” why not enjoy it?
It’s hard for anything else on the program to live up to this masterpiece of camp.
“Oh, Inverted World” by Trey McIntyre is set to a series of songs by the Shins, an indie-rock band. A group of tightly huddled dancers pitch their way across the stage, disgorging members to leap and lope.
It’s a slacker ballet: Even wearing shiny shorts made for boxers, the dancers looked as if they were between gigs as baristas in Seattle.
McIntyre constructs soundly, but the compilation of songs means that no idea lasts more than a few minutes, and the slouch-jog-and-lift vocabulary quickly looks familiar.
The piece doesn’t get interesting until the last song, where a man comes close to an emotional crisis, sticking his hand through the leg of his shorts and almost convulsing. Things should have begun with that ending.
Amy Seiwert’s “Soon These Two Worlds” is a send-’em-home-happy finale to selections from the Kronos Quartet’s “Pieces of Africa,” which are about as African as a travel brochure. The dance for six (mostly white) couples is a little too well-intentioned and could take a hint from “Medea.” If you’re not going to make great art, make it shameless.