A young man strips an older woman of her clothes, wipes her bottom and changes her diaper: It is an early scene in “Mami,” one of the many startling wordless moments that have the otherworldly imagery and slow, deliberate movement of European puppetry; it even debuted last year at the Avignon Festival, known for its puppetry. But these are six human beings, frequently naked, who move through what’s being billed as a “visual poem about the mother-child relationship” conceived and directed by Mario Banushi, who at 27 years old is being credited for having created “a stage language all his own.”
“Mami” is one of the first shows in this year’s Under the Radar festival, which is supposed to present work by artists pushing boundaries, and encourages us to be open-minded about them; it’s not geared to American theatergoing literalists. So forgive my skepticism about the claims for “Mami.” It struck me as something close to dance theater, but without that art form’s energy or technique or any noticeable wit. And for a show meant to explore mothers and children, it offers one scene after another of unmistakably erotic encounters. Some of these are mesmerizing: A man and a woman undress one another beneath a body-length diaphanous white wedding veil; a naked man then approaches them, somehow crawling on his back, his penis pointing upward, until he stands up, his arms reaching out to the other man, and the three embrace, a sensual sandwich.
There is atmosphere aplenty in “Mami.” The lighting casts the stage in a painterly quality. It is dark, often a single bulb in a deserted looking street, with a lone hut lit from within, until fifty minutes in, when there is a flash of red siren lights. The soundscape is busy, from a barking dog and a screaming mother giving birth to the sound of firecrackers and instrumental version of the children’s folk song “The Old Gray Mare He ain’t what he used to be” performed as if at a military parade. There is a tank of water, in which the performers try to drown themselves, sometimes sip from and spit the fluid into the air. All of this one can take as symbolic – womb-like, perhaps.
Near the end of its seventy minutes, a large photograph of a woman nursing an infant descends onto the stage; one of the performers takes a scissor and cuts out the part of the photograph that has the baby. That is clearly about a mother and a child.
“Mami” is at NYU Skirball only through tomorrow, January 10, as part of the 21st annual Under the Radar Festival.
