University Wits

First class Foreman: T. Ryder Smith, Charlotta Mohlin, and Jay Smith

Details

The Gods are Pounding My Head! (AKA Lumberjack Messiah)
By Richard Foreman
Ontological Theatre at St. Mark's Church
131 East 10th Street
212.533.4650

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More About

• Richard Foreman
• Garden Maude
• T. Ryder Smith
• Theater Reviews
• Theater

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Both Jay Smith (Dutch) and T. Ryder Smith (Frenchie) manage to inhabit this world of tartan melancholy with remarkable grace. Their ruminations and "postulations" construct a genuinely heart-rending mood of loss and memorial. It is clear, both from the production and the program notes, that Foreman feels that his lumberjack days are over; or perhaps more accurately, that there is no longer any room in the world for lumberjacks (a/k/a the avant-garde). The pain is palpable. Mortality is in the air. A world-weariness prevails, notably that of an exhausted, meditative conscience.

Roxanne Heinze is a Ph.D. student in Theater History at the CUNY Graduate Center.