Gender, gender expression, cultural models, and rebellion against them animate the absurdist comedy “What a World! What a World!” by Eric Marlin now at The Tank for a short run through August 2.
On one level, it could be interpreted as a Neo-Dadaist deconstruction of gender roles and norms established through cultural narratives. The premise is that two female drag performers are interpreting a fictional movie “The Pearl of My Oyster,” for some kind of event. At least, that’s the best construction I can put on it.
During the first part of the piece, the actors rehearse, strike poses and speak lines from the movie script between the characters Keith, a simple fisherman, and Charlotte, a rich sophisticated woman. The speeches are virtually all clichés about tough men and brazen, wise-cracking women, standard tropes of movies from that era, as is the notion of a romance between two people from diverse social and economic classes.
The two women actors onstage speaking these lines are called Not Keith and Not Charlotte. Throughout their interactions they comment on the lines of the movie and use them to address larger issues around gender and gender expression.
At the core of all this for the characters are deep-seated, existential questions about who they are and if that is knowable. The arguments expand and turn in on themselves, and at one point Not Charlotte says, “Don’t turn this into essentialist nonsense,” and she follows up with “You make this a battle of the sexes. What we’re watching is a fraying of the binary.” At this point, the piece begins to feel like satire, as if the very gender roles they are decrying provided a foundation by which—or against which—to define themselves. Later, Not Charlotte summarizes all of this by saying “I just want to be my authentic self, but I don’t have a fucking clue about what that is.”
The last section of the play is Not Keith and Not Charlotte lip-syncing the lines from the movie in drag, presumably at the event for which they were rehearsing. That becomes camp and a send-up of the archetypes, yet at the same time, there is an undercurrent of tragedy in this because when the fun is over, Not Keith and Not Charlotte are still unresolved. What playwright Marlin ultimately seems to be writing about is a very contemporary issue (which is why I referred to it as Neo-Dadaism) about the difficulty of finding oneself. The irony is that it is no less difficult than the attempt many have experienced in trying to conform to idealized roles.
Marlin’s style draws heavily on the absurdists, with disjointed speeches and quick shifts that often force the audience to catch up. Director Hana Khanin has added a lot of dance-like movement, which appears to reflect the nature of the interaction between the characters—when they are in alignment or when they are in conflict. It works most of the time, but there are often moments when it feels unfocused, making it difficult to follow what’s going on.
The two actors Queen-Tiye Akamefula as Not Keith and Annie Hoeg as Not Charlotte tackle the roles with total commitment and unflagging energy. That’s essential for this genre of theater where disruptive abstraction and an inherently chaotic style can be challenging for an audience. The best advice is simply to go with it and let the non-linear theatricality create the experience.
In the end, though, the play asks three very simple questions: Who are we? How do we find ourselves? And how do we know? Like the original Dadaists, who were reacting to social and political situations in the 1920s railing against what today we would call “bougie” and an acceptance of “norms” that make no sense to a new generation, there are no clear answers. The struggle, however, continues.
What A World! What A World! | The Tank | 312 West 36th Street | Mon, Thurs-Sat 7 p.m.; Sun 3 p.m. through August 2 | $28-$53 at The Tank | 65 mins, no intermission
