My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [19]
Then other people in vintage outfits crawl onto the stage, except for one lady who’s toting an IV pole. When IV Lady squeezes her bag of saline, it laughs.
No one dances.
The sound track is some French song that gets louder and faster and includes the sound of puppies yelping. I lean into Stacey and whisper, “Boy, if Loki were here, he’d be having a fit!”
As the music gets louder, the smoking lady begins to twirl in her rolly chair and her rolly desk. Someone gets slapped, but no one dances.
A man enters stage right in a tutu, which is promising for dancing, and a scrunched-up baby mask, which is not. Someone slaps him, and then there’s a whole bunch of shouting in Spanish. Everyone in the audience laughs, except for those of us who thought it would be très amusante to take French in high school.
A woman then comes out with her head in a grandfather clock and sways back and forth.
The swaying is the closest we’ve come so far to dancing.
I’m beginning to suspect I’m not going to see any flamenco tonight.
More puppies yelp while two shirtless guys fly onstage with some woman in a ball gown. She gets thrown back and forth between them. Then a different girl in a Mad Men-looking dress enters stage left. She begins to shout in Spanish, and I lean into Stacey, saying, “Seriously, if I wanted to hear people yell in Spanish, I could have just stayed in my living room and opened the windows.”
After she finishes shouting, the whole audience laughs except for me. Apparently she said something hilarious, but I have no idea what. Stacey’s Spanish is a bit less rudimentary than mine, and she says she thinks the woman was reading a recipe.
Yes. Because that makes perfect sense.
A different woman comes out in a ball gown and a gas mask and drops rubber babies out of her dress as she slowly walks by. The tutu baby man then picks up the babies and slaps them.
There’s still no dancing.
A giant Velcro mattress is wheeled out and placed in a vertical position in the center of the stage. A lady in Velcro pajamas throws herself at it for a while. Every time she hits it, her hair fans out, and it looks like she’s been electrocuted. This is my favorite part so far.
Tutu Baby Man revisits the stage and shouts more39 while a couple of guys in pajama bottoms at the front of the stage yank another woman’s shirt down and begin to slap all her naked bits.
Have I mentioned the no-dancing part yet?
And why was I not warned there would be nudity?
In my peripheral vision, I see Stacey stifling her laugher because she knows I’m so prudish that I actually spell out words that are even vaguely sexual. She catches my eye and mouths, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea!”
Then Marta, the lead dancer, comes out wearing a circus-tent-sized shirtdress. She strips from the waist up and begins to make out with a statue for a while.
Like, a long while.
Then the whole stage is covered with an enormous sheet of dry-cleaning film, and Marta and her naked self writhe against it for a very long, naked while. She almost dances but is likely too busy being naked and trying not to suffocate when she breathes in the film.
I guess this is why they put all those warnings on the plastic.
Then the entire ensemble assembles onstage with giant plates of watermelon,40 and they spit chunks of it into the air and at the audience. They pour water all over themselves and swim around on the wet, watermelon-y floor.
And then it is over.
With no goddamned dancing whatsoever.
The audience goes batshit crazy with applause and gives the “dancers” an extra-long standing ovation while I try to make sense of what the hell I just saw.
As soon as everyone finally finishes applauding, I turn to Stacey and say, “You realize this is exactly why my side keeps cutting funding to the arts. And by the way, I totally called the watermelon.”
Later we find out that Marta Carrasco and company were retiring certain pieces and that what we saw was essentially a medley of