Catch the Wave

What: Swim Shorts 3
Location: The Holiday Inn Midtown on the roof, 440 West 57th Street
Date: series 1 ran until July 29; series 2 runs until August 12
Cost: $18, plus an extra $7 for a post performance dip in the pool
Bohemian Factor: Hidden behind their sunglasses and tans
Geek Factor: Present, but potentially canceled out by the proximity of Holiday Inn tourists.

July 21, 2007

Ever since celebrity director Peter Sellars staged Antony and Cleopatra at Harvard’s Adams House swimming pool, ambitious thespians have gravitated towards aquatic settings. But one need not be an avant-garde director – or even a theatre person – to understand the appeal of swimming pools. Sure, there may be controversy over whether splashy displays of watery hi-jinks advance the plot, or even distract viewers with the gimmick. But no one can dispute the fundamental attractiveness of bringing the audience closer to an imagined seaside, especially now when the City’s air is sweltering with ozone-infested, viscous humidity, and every urbanite covets admission to one of those exclusive rooftop swimming pools.

Taking advantage of this primal urge within all of us New Yorkers, Impetuous Theater Group’s Swim Shorts 3, makes no pretense of delivering ambitious narrative, or heck, any narrative at all some of the time, in exchange for a relatively inexpensive evening sitting around the Holiday Inn pool in Hell’s Kitchen, where a post-performance dip costs a mere $7 extra. Audience members sit on deck chairs, the actors get thoroughly soaked, and entire sentences occasionally get swallowed by an acoustical black hole, but it’s OK….are we really there for dramatic complexity?

Actually, the playwrights contributing the short, almost intentionally forgettable plays that make up “Swim Shorts” do have the burden of holding our attention, without being spiritually tortured by the desire to open up that copy of “Harry Potter Book Seven” that most audience members had stowed in tell-tale Barnes and Noble handle bags (after all, I was there the weekend of Harry-mania, but feel free to substitute Thomas Pynchon, US Magazine, or whatever subway reading you stow away on a Saturday afternoon). In this regard, the writers in Series 1 who successfully achieved this task (Series 2 has already begun) were those that used the pool as a stand-in for some other quasi-dangerous natural setting. These include quicksand (with the actors moving slowly and steadily away from the shallow end), an unknown stretch of the ocean where ship passengers are stranded, and - for by far the kookiest, most plotless and shamefully entertaining bit, Brian MacInnis Smallwood’s “Der Eisbar” – the Antarctic sea, complete with foam representations of U-boats. Extra silliness points also to writer Janet Zarecor for postulating the concept of a drunken guardian angel in her short, titled “Forgiveness.”

Perhaps it is not quite a coincidence that in those plays where the pool is just that – a hotel pool – the stories resemble an NYU student’s Dramatic Writing homework, utterly subordinate to the constraints of the exercise, laden with a few heavy-handed clichés more likely to sink than swim (OK, I promise I’ll stop with the literal metaphors…it’s just too easy!)

But wait; really, what are we here for anyway? Justifiably light-hearted entertainment awaits those willing to use the power of their imagination… while everyone else can go bake their brains out as the sun sets.