Theater Reviews

Telling Tale: Playwright Heather Woodbury Photo by Nick Amato

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• Megalomaniac Ridley
• Steven Leigh Morris
• Woodbury (New York)
• Mental Health
• Eating Disorders

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 WHAT TO WEAR If Robert Wilson is the gold standard for contemporary spectacle, then Richard Foreman represents the 99-cent store end of the spectrum, an eccentric auteur rummaging through the Styrofoam and cardboard detritus of pop culture. He and composer Michael Gordon have created a minimalist opera based on an enigmatic, repetitious libretto whose central character (or rather, whose idea of a central character), Madeline X, endures a kind of fashion torture by the rulers of style. I’ve probably already overstated its meaning because narrative is the show’s most elusive commodity — it’s better to think of it as an ether dream in which a chorus and “movement ensemble,” nightmarishly costumed by E.B. Brooks in a version of the plaid skirts Britney Spears once popularized, are armed with striped golf woods and skulls on poles. The evening is sung through by Sarah Chalfy, Harmony Jiroudek, Marja-Liisa Kay and Marc Lowenstein, who are dressed in what seem to be accessorized hotel housecleaner uniforms, while the stage is often dominated by images of ducks that both menace and are menacing. As a diversion it works for its 65-minute length — if it lasted a minute longer you’d want to cut your throat. When asked at the next MOCA opening what What to Wear was about, viewers will get by with saying something like, “It is what it is.” But then, almost any answer would be the truth — or at least, in this age of artistic shrugs, would not be a lie. REDCAT, W. Second & Hope sts., dwntwn.; Tues.-Sun., 8:30 p.m.; thru Oct. 1 (Oct. 1 perf, 3 p.m.). (213) 237-2800. (Steven Mikulan)