Before the demons Anne Sexton battled wrestled her down to a quiet, lonely suicide, the brilliant poet managed an outpouring of work exploring female identity that reads like that of a modern-day oracle at Delphi. Creator-performer Hannah Wolfe weaves Sexton's gorgeous poetic gems into a one-act multimedia collage of biography snippets, letters, news articles, essays, video, photographs, modern-dance choreography (by co-performer Laurel Duggan), original music (by Lindsay Rae Spurlock), and audio of Sexton herself. Wolfe plays the poet, her daughter Linda, and a modern-day literature professor.
Her Kind is rough around the edges — lighting was problematic at Monday's performance, and the lit prof's end-of-play metamorphosis into Sexton seems arbitrary, despite its clever melding of film and theatre. What comes across most powerfully is Sexton's utter genius. With Wolfe, a longtime devotee, relishing each richly burnished phrase — now coy, now angry, now disillusioned, now triumphant — it's startling to realize how like the monologues of characters such as Medea, Electra, or Antigone these poems are, and how deeply, hauntingly theatrical they can be.
Presented by Wild Child Presents as part of the New York International Fringe Festival
at the Linhart Theatre@ 440 Studios, 440 Lafayette St., NYC.
Aug. 20-25. Remaining performances: Wed., Aug. 22, 3:30 p.m.; Thu., Aug. 23, 9:45 p.m.; Fri. Aug. 24, 7:45 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 25, noon.
(212) 279-4488 or (888) 374-6436 or www.fringenyc.org.