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The in-dark answered with wind
Jay Scheib's Bellona, Destroyer of Cities is not a direct translation of Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren (1975). As both the author and the playwright acknowledged during the post-show conversation, the nine-hundred-page novel would make either a terrific miniseries or a week-long festival in a consenting city somewhere; neither is going to fit onstage in ninety minutes. Not to mention the prose is so dense, cyclical, unreliable, etc., any kind of adaptation should just feel like chaos up on a screen. And so it does, when it starts. The opening-scene orgy scared two or three people out of the audience1 and the next bit with the astronaut at the bar probably confused everyone else, but it doesn't take long for different threads of plot to begin to emerge from the sex and violence and fragments of poetry, all interweaving the drifter Kid's odyssey through the city of Bellona, cloud-covered, burning, quite possibly unstuck in time, a dissociative place that is itself an unstable text. There is a notebook of poems which existed before Kid came to Bellona, but which could only have been written by Kid about Bellona; they both reproduce Kid's memories (which are themselves somewhat damaged) and foretell the end of the story, which is not really an end. Carrying the notebook everywhere, Kid adds to them, rewrites, edits, eventually publishes, albeit with mixed results. Perhaps what Kid is writing is Bellona. It's an enigmatic collage of a world and so of a play, with video projection offering otherwise unavailable views on the action and basic stage effects being applied in plain sight. But it—reminds me of Jubilee (1977), now that I write this, because it's full of jags and breaks and switchbacks and should have lost the audience with the tonal shifts alone and instead, if it doesn't all quite hold together, it holds on.
And there is a lot of sex in it, of all sorts, which I appreciated, and I particularly like that the indeterminacy of Bellona in this version extends to the protagonist's gender: Kid in Dhalgren is male. Kid in Bellona, Destroyer of Cities is played by Sarita Choudhury2 and sometimes addressed as a woman, as when the character of Lanya identifies Kid as "[her] girlfriend"—sometimes as a man, as with the recurring line, "Some things are easier for guys." At different points in the narrative, Kid can be found in skirts, men's shirts, half a pair of pajamas, low-belted cargo pants, and an androgynous grey T-shirt that is shortly covered in blood. And after one particularly mystifying interaction with a lover, Kid says in exasperation to a third party, "I just wanted to get my cock sucked!" and the man's response is an offer to blow Kid, which Kid takes him up on. You see why the pronoun difficulty. It is possible that this character is not strictly Dhalgren's Kid, but the next iteration to enter Bellona as interpreted from the last scene of the novel, but still: it was offhand genderfuck and I approve. The next traveler in this version is Choudhury's daughter, coming gravely down through the audience in the final scene.
So it's a shape-changing piece, like the city it's named for; it deserves more critical attention than I can give it at this hour of the night, but Delany said afterward that he had seen it five times, that each time it was different, and that this production was his favorite so far. If you can make the matinée tomorrow, go. I even think my father enjoyed it.
1. I am not joking, either about the orgy or the people who got up and left. At one point, someone mostly naked goes to fetch a glass of water and hand it to someone else in the middle of the scrum on the mattress, because it's been (onstage, five minutes; in-play) hours and people get dehydrated after that much sex. It was great.
2. Whom I just discovered in February with Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala (1992), her film debut. I kept meaning to write about that movie. It's a good thing no one's paying me for this stuff.
And there is a lot of sex in it, of all sorts, which I appreciated, and I particularly like that the indeterminacy of Bellona in this version extends to the protagonist's gender: Kid in Dhalgren is male. Kid in Bellona, Destroyer of Cities is played by Sarita Choudhury2 and sometimes addressed as a woman, as when the character of Lanya identifies Kid as "[her] girlfriend"—sometimes as a man, as with the recurring line, "Some things are easier for guys." At different points in the narrative, Kid can be found in skirts, men's shirts, half a pair of pajamas, low-belted cargo pants, and an androgynous grey T-shirt that is shortly covered in blood. And after one particularly mystifying interaction with a lover, Kid says in exasperation to a third party, "I just wanted to get my cock sucked!" and the man's response is an offer to blow Kid, which Kid takes him up on. You see why the pronoun difficulty. It is possible that this character is not strictly Dhalgren's Kid, but the next iteration to enter Bellona as interpreted from the last scene of the novel, but still: it was offhand genderfuck and I approve. The next traveler in this version is Choudhury's daughter, coming gravely down through the audience in the final scene.
So it's a shape-changing piece, like the city it's named for; it deserves more critical attention than I can give it at this hour of the night, but Delany said afterward that he had seen it five times, that each time it was different, and that this production was his favorite so far. If you can make the matinée tomorrow, go. I even think my father enjoyed it.
1. I am not joking, either about the orgy or the people who got up and left. At one point, someone mostly naked goes to fetch a glass of water and hand it to someone else in the middle of the scrum on the mattress, because it's been (onstage, five minutes; in-play) hours and people get dehydrated after that much sex. It was great.
2. Whom I just discovered in February with Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala (1992), her film debut. I kept meaning to write about that movie. It's a good thing no one's paying me for this stuff.
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Was excited to learn that someone attempted to translate Dhalgren into drama (the choice of stage over film being appropriately inappropriate and counter-intuitive). The novel is a weird tribal touch-stone - I have met very few people who have actually read it, and even fewer who would admit to identifying with the story or its characters. The novel's complexity and ambiguity deny it the kind of communal expression we see with Eclipse or Harry Potter (- Dhalgren fandom does not constitute a huge demographic). A Burning Man-type festival would be interesting, but probably also a magnet for vice-squad detectives. I remember meeting a clerk in a comics/head shop back in the late Seventies who claimed to have actually visited Bellona ... a compelling fantasy, and one I can honestly admit to indulging myself. I would willingly tour the real thing (and can't help wondering about theme-park applications). I shall no doubt continue to re-read Dhalgren yearly for the foreseeable future while both appreciating and mourning the alienation that drives and defracts the narrative (and its afficionados from one another). Thanks for taking time to write the review.
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Although because of all the video work, it winds up with filmed passages, and they are beautifully integrated. I think it's the most successful use I've seen of video in a stage production: it contributed close-ups and alternate points of view, communicated simultaneity in a way that enhanced the multiple feeling of the world, and never distracted.
The novel is a weird tribal touch-stone - I have met very few people who have actually read it, and even fewer who would admit to identifying with the story or its characters.
Jay Scheib mentioned that he kept running into "brilliant people who had read Dhalgren when they were fourteen," which is eventually why he read the novel (and promptly decided to adapt it). I wasn't fourteen, but I was in high school; I read my parents' copy. I think I was following from "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones." I should re-read it again, but of course it's in a box . . .
The novel's complexity and ambiguity deny it the kind of communal expression we see with Eclipse or Harry Potter (- Dhalgren fandom does not constitute a huge demographic).
It might be just as well. The Twilight phenomenon has been terrifying. Also, I think if you seriously discuss Samuel R. Delany and Stephenie Meyer in the same sentence, you spontaneously combust.
A Burning Man-type festival would be interesting, but probably also a magnet for vice-squad detectives.
This is almost certainly true.
Thanks for taking time to write the review.
You're welcome. I'm glad it was useful.
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Also, it makes me quite happy that there is genderqueer everywhere. *flings glitter and knee breeches*
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Nah, last night's dreams were edging back to normal, thank God. I was in Vancouver and Joann Sfar called me. Possibly in the dream I spoke French.
*flings glitter and knee breeches*
Amen.
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---L.
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I loved the language, I got the ring-structure; I'm sure I missed all sorts of other things. But the experience of watching the play remarkably matched what I remember of reading Dhalgren, so they were doing something right.
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---L.
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The piece does travel, changing as it does; it premiered last April in New York City and played in Paris this past March. It's entirely possible it will turn up somewhere near you. I hope it does.
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Thank you!
If you're ever near it, I recommend.
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Nine
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Shall go read.
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I didn't realize you'd missed it once!
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Somehow it didn't occur to me that it would show up practically in my backyard!
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Well, I am not sure it was performed anywhere near you.
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Thank you! I was really glad to have seen it.