Opinionist: Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage

Jensen Studios NYC

It was one year ago that irreverent theater company Banana Bag & Bodice presented New Yorkers with The Fall and Rise of The Rising Fallen, a rock musical which told the intriguing yet aurally execrable story of an oil rig's house band. They've now resurfaced with another offbeat musical extravaganza, and I'm happy to report that this production, which uses the epic poem Beowulf as a narrative template, is a far more successful fusion of rock and non-narrative theater. Credit for that goes to composer Dave Malloy, whose anthemic, bruising score is jubilantly performed by a sprawling onstage orchestra of brass, strings, piano, accordion, guitar, drums and saw.

But Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage is not an unqualified success. The angle here is a deconstruction of academic deconstruction: throughout the show, three smug literary critics bloviate downstage while all the bloody, visceral life explodes behind them. Those eggheads just complicate everything, man. But unlike The Wooster Group, whose radical deconstructions sometimes offer startling new insights into the source material, Banana Bag's Beowulf treatment feels rote, impersonal, and glib. Throw some contemporary slang, some stylized combat, and some pop culture signifiers up on stage, and voila! Downtown theater hipsterati will lap it up, as they did during the performance I attended. The production's broad parody of academic pedantry is simply facile, and Hollywood's recent 3D movie adaptation of Beowulf did a better job of exploring the depths of this ancient myth.

One gets the sense that talented writer/star Jason Craig—who tells the Times he chose Beowulf somewhat randomly from his bookshelf—might just as easily have grabbed a copy of Paradise Lost and ended up with pretty much the same show. And yet it's still a mostly entertaining two hours of theater, despite the company's regrettable decision to present it on a proscenium stage at Abrons Art Center. This is the kind of rollicking show that belongs in a Brooklyn warehouse (St. Ann's would be ideal, but, speak of the devil, the Wooster Group's currently ensconced there). Rod Hipskind's inspired direction is fast-paced and fun, peaking with an underwater battle humorously executed with fish tanks and a Gallagher-esque tarp for the first row. But ultimately, it's Malloy's score that makes this worth your 20 bucks; songs like the Ramones-esque "Body" and the Weill-inspired "Hrogthgar" are foot-stomping winners, and the virtuoso penultimate number, "Olde English," deserves to become the iPod generation's "Pirate Jenny."