Performances: Disco Descending (Karen Getz) (future performances)

After the performative train wreck that was Everyone, I was really looking forward to seeing another show. Any other show. But I figured that even though Karen Getz had been a reason for much pain and suffering during Everyone, her own Live Arts contribution would probably serve as great medicine.

Disco Descending
I loved Karen Getz's Suburban Love Songs so much that I saw it twice. Naturally, I assumed that its follow-up, Disco Descending, which featured most of the original cast, would be a home-run. Sadly, although a really enjoyable show, it was more like a double. The choreography is no less fun, and the use of comedic actors (Mary Carpenter, Jen Childs, Dawn Falato, Mario Fraboni, Dave Jadico, Pete Pryor, and Fred Siegel join Getz onstage) rather than trained dancers works to great effect. But Disco Descending felt like it was trying just a little bit too hard: it had a plot. Not the basic "bored adults at a party" plot of Suburban Love Songs, but a real, bona fide, classical plot: Orpheus and Eurydice. It's a story we know well. Probably too well, and I for one don't like the ending, which in this case, despite some hopeful evidence to the contrary, remains faithful to the source text. The set changes between our world and Hades were a bit distracting, too (Suburban Love Songs had plenty of furniture swapping, but the lights never had to be taken to black to create a new scene), and during them, I spent time pondering whether the characters in Disco Descending were supposed to be the same as those in Suburban Love Songs, or whether Getz just really likes the pairing of Jadico and Childs as husband and wife. That may, ultimately, have been the flaw of Disco Descending: it spends a little too much time making you think, and not enough time making you laugh. It's a good time, to be sure, but if I had my pick of the two, I'd take Suburban Love Songs any day.