The new play “Circle Jerk” is a lot.
It starts up with a rhyming prologue by a Shakespearean fool-troll and builds up to an incredibly dense, incredibly disjointed third act, packed with a barrage of fast-and-furious pop references. Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley’s show is a crazed, ambitious satire of how the media and woke cultures feed on themselves and into flamboyant incoherence — an M.O. it ends up reflecting.
The story revolves around Jurgen (Foley), a YouTube provocateur reminiscent of Milo Yiannopoulos, and his BFF and enabler Lord Baby Bussy (Breslin) as they hatch a “gay colonial eugenicist plot” to take over Manhattan, then the world. To do so, they create an artificially intelligent influencer named Eva Maria (Catherine María Rodríguez) by combining a virtual assistant called Alexia with a meme machine.
It’s hard to understand how exactly this master plan is meant to work out, but “Circle Jerk” — beware when Googling the show — does not concern itself with practicalities.
Into this mix we must add Jurgen’s new date, Patrick (Foley), an aspiring actor, and Patrick’s friend Michael (Breslin), who is quick to clarify his position on the artistic map: “I don’t work in theater, I curate performance,” he says. “The relationship to reality is totally different.”
This last zinger could sum up the entire show, both in its themes and setup — the most elaborate I have yet seen in the virtual-theater era.
Since the live production, directed by Breslin, Foley and Rory Pelsue, involves physical staging (at the Brooklyn space Mitu580) that goes way beyond Zoom boxes, the three cast members, each handling three roles, must execute quick costume changes, with a few prerecorded segments easing some transitions and adding extra mirrors in a hall already full of them. The show is performed live until Oct. 23 and will be available on demand Oct. 24-Nov. 7.
In their playwriting guise, Breslin and Foley acknowledge the influence of Charles Ludlam’s 1984 farce, “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” in which two actors play eight characters. (At one point during the performance of “Circle Jerk” I saw, there was a scene change, and it was completely unclear whether this peep into the backstage action was intended or not.) You can see the filiation, especially as Breslin and Foley, who run the company Fake Friends, also borrow the referential ethos of Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company.
Most of the play’s fun comes from trying to identify the many, many song snippets, throwaway quotes and lightning-fast visual jokes. Some are from the pop-culture canon: Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” Britney Spears, an injunction for Alexia to “emancipate Mimi.” The television show “The Hills” feeds lip-synced dialogue.
And then there are the bits fresh from our current online world, as when an exchange between Jurgen and Patrick is brilliantly set to Jufu’s TikTok hit “Who R U.”
And yet the show (which has received financial backing from the playwright Jeremy O. Harris) feels like a morality tale without a strong point of view. It touches on the idea that the oppressed, drunk on social-media power, can turn into the oppressor, and the theme of cultural and racial appropriation is ever-present.
Eva Maria, for example, somehow (I have no idea how) turns into a real person, Catherine, who pretends to be Indigenous and calls herself Kokomo — “I’m terrified of being white,” she says. To which Michael shoots back, “So you named yourself after a Beach Boys song?” (This subplot brings to mind the recent case of Jessica Krug, a white academic who made up a Black Caribbean identity.)
So, yes, this new play is a lot, and the virtuosity of its frenetic pace is impressive. But sometimes a lot is not quite enough: When you choose to focus on surface, the wounds you inflict may not cut deep.
Circle Jerk
Livestreamed performances through Oct. 23. Available online Oct. 24 to Nov. 7; circlejerk.live
"Review" - Google News
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'Circle Jerk' Review: A Satire That Aims at Too Many Targets - The New York Times
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