On Behalf of Nature

Fragile strains of music pierce delicately but defiantly through the darkness. Silhouetted bodies writhe and reach upwards from the floor as the stage is slowly flooded with cool light. One performer stands bathed in fiery orange at the front of the stage, arms outreached and mouth opening and closing in a wordless appeal to the audience.

These are just a few of the more striking moments in Meredith Monk’s tapestry of bodies and voices, woven together into a meditation on the natural environment and our place within it. The problem is that these separate and often beautiful threads are loosely knitted, resulting not in a complex web of interconnectedness between human beings and nature, but instead in a barely comprehensible tangle of images and sounds.

Abstraction and symbolism, often powerful theatrical tools, become increasingly empty without anything to connect them. Images simply appear and then dissolve. Elaine Buckholtz’s gorgeous lightning stunningly illuminates the bodies on stage and Monk’s music offers a delicate soundscape, but the disjointed beauty is hypnotic at best and soporific at worst.

Monk’s subject matter is vital, even if her tactics for appealing for the environment are a little disingenuous – all those lights don’t run on nothing. But despite the brief departure from the abstract to show a series of projected film clips of the planet, contrasting natural scenes with the impact of human existence, Monk’s message is only lightly impressed upon her audience. Unlike the dire predicament of our planet, this piece never feels urgent.