Long one of the city's most able experimental theatre companies, the Talking Band is still smashing cliché, creating new forms, and reveling in surprise.
Delicious Rivers, written and composed by Talking Band co-founder Ellen Maddow, is a collage of absurd, mostly amusing short scenes, movements, and tunes set in and around Nic Ularu's clever, minimalist post office. There are two clusters of people, the employees and the customers; also on stage is a three-member band consisting of a trombone player, a bass player, and a singer. The segments range from delightful discussions about cell phones and houses in the Catskills to more-meandering, metaphysical passages, including an exploration of why one character's house has all of a sudden "changed" on her.
All this starts magically, as the occasionally lovely writing is interrupted and supplemented by the extremely hip musicians parading about the stage. The actors prance and prattle with joy, the scenes capture the world, the characters have depth. After a while patterns begin to emerge, and the work starts to sink from redundancy. Interestingly, this is part of the construct: Maddow wrote the piece after attending a creative-writing workshop at Canada's Banff International Research Station, where she collaborated with mathematicians and other writers and explored "Penrose tilings." According to the program, these are "repeated patterns [that] never repeat in a predictable way."
Talking Band co-founder Paul Zimet directs his company loosely, focusing less on rigor and more on freeing impulses. The whole group is accordingly relaxed and compelling, especially the witty Gary Brownlee and Jan Leslie Harding. Also fine in this ensemble cast are Jay Smith, Cortez Nance Jr., Mary Shultz, Chris Wells, and Kim Gambino.
Presented by the Talking Band at La MaMa E.T.C.,
74A E. Fourth St., NYC.
Jan. 13-Feb. 5. Fri. and Sat., 10 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 5:30 p.m.
(212) 352-3101.