‘The Old Woman” is pretty much a live-action version of “The Itchy & Scratchy Show” starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe.
This new theatrical piece has all the vaudevillian shtick — oversize props, funny voices, shrill sound effects — of the fictional animated series. There’s even a cardboard-cutout gun and an exploding box, as well as a similar quasi-S&M relationship between the principals, here clad in tight, shiny black suits and dramatic black-and-white makeup.
But since we’re at BAM and not watching “The Simpsons” in our pajamas, the pedigree is high-brow chic. International-festival darling Robert Wilson (“Einstein on the Beach”) handled staging, sets and lighting, and the score — part demonic circus music, part recycled spirituals — was put together by the inventive Hal Willner.
The plot, such as it is, is based on a 1939 short story by Russian writer Daniil Kharms. In effect, the show consists of a series of loosely connected absurdist vignettes.
It’s best not to look for depth in what’s essentially a series of gorgeous tableaux. At a recent performance the audience laughed in sympathy when Baryshnikov asked Dafoe, “You don’t know what’s going on there, do you?”
Those new to Wilson will get a much bigger kick out of “The Old Woman,” since they’ll discover the director’s signature moves. Regulars, on the other hand, may not be as swayed by the slo-mo gestures, the precise sound and lighting cues, the sharply angled set elements floating in midair — they’ve seen them all before.
The big difference here, of course, is the presence of Baryshnikov and Dafoe, the first a fleet-footed sprite, the second a hulkier figure speaking in a Tom Waits growl. Even within Wilson’s constricting universe, they manage to find the humanity within the cartoon.