LA Review: 'pool (no water)'

Mark Ravenhill’s 2005 opus aptly has the look and feel of a piece of performance art. This time out, Brit Ravenhill, who often skewers the evils of multinational corporations, neoconservatism, and the superrich, exposes the hypocrisies of the artistic community. His nameless characters are a group of artists who have known each other through thick and thin, one of whom achieves enormous commercial success, growing famous and wealthy in the process. The focal character (played by Jessica Lamprinos) throws a lavish party at her new home and invites her artist pals, who sit around denigrating what they perceive as having their faces rubbed in her success. The friends decide to go for a swim, but no one notices the pool has been drained. The hostess is the first to dive in, suffering a sickening collision with the concrete. The rest of “pool (no water)” follows her recuperation and the reactions of her friends, who begin to view her as the possible subject of a major collaborative project—ostensibly an homage to her but, in reality, retribution for the success she has enjoyed. Ironically, she discovers the beginnings of their project and, now on her way to a complete recovery, wrests creative and artistic control. As before, they can only criticize her for taking the initiative—and as the play progresses, so does their bitter hatred.

Clearly experimenting with the dramatic form, Ravenhill deliberately offers little that’s conventional in the way of plot, characters, and dialogue. That puts the emphasis on director Dave Barton’s staging and the work he gleans from choreographers Angela Ann Lopez and Lee Samuel Tanng, scenic designer David Scaglione, lighting designer Jeremy Bug Ojeda, and costume designer Heather Enriquez Girten. More crucial are Barton’s choices for musical underscoring and Eric Wahl’s often arresting visuals. The music ranges from Marilyn Manson’s “This Is the New Shit” and “Theater” to Handel’s Harp Concerto, op. 4, no. 6, Garbage’s “#1 Crush,” and the Smiths’ “Asleep” and includes the cast’s moving performance of Foo Fighters’ “These Days.” As underscoring, the pieces create an aural ebb and flow that complements the stomping, leaping, grinding movements crafted for the cast by Lopez and Tanng. Even more striking are Wahl’s photos and videos, flashed continuously on the upstage wall in duplicate—each image paired with its mirror image. The hundreds of graphic depictions mesh nudity with medical scenes and representations of destruction and death—a mind-blowing panorama of horrors.

Lamprinos follows the work’s minimalist template, using modest means to create a portrayal of a calm, warm-hearted, yet cool-headed woman with an enigmatic smile. Considering how the character is savaged by her supposed best friends, we can’t help empathizing with her. The 10 supporting players who portray the friends function as a sort of Greek chorus, an effective device that merges each individual’s thoughts into the collective. In the show’s 2010 U.S. premiere, the company’s use of just six performers made for a staging that was less sprawling, more compact, and thus more potent. That original sextet—Peter Balgoyen, Christopher Basile, Keith Bennett, Sean Engard, Terri Mowrey, and Alexander Price—are joined by Bryan Jennings, Jeffrey Kievet, Cynthia Ryanen, and Melita Ann Sagar. While all are effective in communicating  hypocrisy, pettiness, insecurity, and sickening feelings of guilt, some of the most stunning moments belong to Mowrey and Ryanen, showing the defiant viciousness behind the group’s phony sentimentality. Like any piece of performance art, “pool” will likely evoke highly subjective responses, baffling some while energizing others.

Presented by 22 Players for Monkey Wrench Collective at Flight Theatre at the Complex, 6472 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. May 18–June 17. Fri. and Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (800) 838-3006 or brownpapertickets.com/event/238689.