REVIEW: Dada, in a Texas Town and Worth St. Storefront
Ada, Dalia and Dada in Floydada. That’s the essence of the odd yet charming new play, “Floydada,” now showing in a gutted storefront on Worth Street. Ada and Dalia are sisters, Floydada (pronounced Floy day-duh) is in Texas and Dada, you’ll recall, was the avant garde, artistic and literary movement born in reaction to World War I. It brought the world art created from familiar objects and free form performances of poetry, dance and music that challenged the traditional concept of what art could be.
Knowledge of the Dada movement may help you settle into Floydada as will the fact that the location is a tiny, rural town, but this is also a story about those who stay and those who go, love, family and the magical power of art.
The play opens in 1927, as Dalia, played with Bohemian verve by Nomi Tichman, returns home from travelling the world. She brings with her exotic notions of modern art in the form of Dada.
Along with some emotional troubles, she has in her baggage a piece of art that perhaps represents a sort of genie’s lamp with a strange power to inspire. It all seems very bizarre to Ada, her younger, more conventional sister, played with passion by Catherine Porter. She has dutifully stayed at home caring for their parents and the family business, a dry goods store on Main Street. The store is now closed, providing the possibility of an empty space.
And here we are in an empty storefront watching a play that features an empty store. The raw concrete floors, air conditioning ducts and holes in the walls lend a sense of dilapidation and decay. But the open space also allows for the creation of multiple environments.
The sister’s living room, front yard, kitchen and storefront are all in our line of site on the minimal set by Casey McLain. Beyond the area of the “stage,” new art inspired by Dada is on show and there will be talks and recreations of Dada performances in conjunction with the play. Be warned, there’s not much in the way of heating and at a recent performance the audience sat huddled in coats and hats for the show’s duration.
A frost also hangs over the sister’s relationship at the start, but as Dalia introduces Ada to the liberation that art can bring, a deep warmth returns between them. Ada is even allowed to read Dalia’s letters from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, though her name sounds like a playwright’s invention, she was a real-life Dadaist credited with spreading the movement to New York.
The two sisters set about performing free form poetry with music (played with gusto by Dalia on a toy piano) for the local community.
There are hints that the good citizens of Floydada don’t know what to make of the eccentric sisters’ rhythmic, abstract chants. For the Tribeca audience, perhaps more attuned to such things, the performances within the play are intriguing not least for the feat of memorization required as the “poems” are close to very loose word association in some cases. The “happenings” are enhanced by collage-like images projected on the backdrop. These are created as we watch by “projection puppeteer” Leila Ghanazi, who also does sterling service with some very homemade sound effects throughout.
Playwright Barry Rowell writes in the program that it was a visit to Floydada that inspired him to create Ada and Dalia with the two actors here in mind.
Despite a rather slow, flat start, the notion that spread to the hinterland is entertaining. But perhaps it’s best to adopt a Dada attitude in approach to this play and just wait to see what happens to Ada and Dalia and Dada in Floydada.
“Floydada” plays at the Merchants Square Building, 40 Worth St., until April 11. Tickets at peculiarworks.org.