PERFORMANCE ART AT MOCA : ‘BLIND STAB’: A WOLFE IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

Inside Kedric Robin Wolfe is a 4-year-old who loves to run around the house making noises like a fire engine. RUM, RUM, RUM! AROOOOOO!

Wolfe’s inner child is not trying to get out. He is out already. See his piece on the Angel’s Flight series at the Museum of Contemporary Art, “Blind Stab.”

It is terrible, but one can see why it got a standing ovation Thursday night, where the evening’s first piece, Jan Munroe’s “Blood Is . . ,” did not. Munroe is only an artist. Wolfe is a character.

Think of him as the Florence Foster Jenkins of performance art. Just as Miss Jenkins could manage a fairly plausible melodic line, only to hit a clinker at its climax, Munroe invariably produces a shattering visual cliche each time his piece seems to be rising to a statement.

“Blind Stab” is based on pages that Wolfe tells us he has chosen at random from books in the Santa Monica public library. The piece calls for him to assume many faces, all recognizably those of Kedric Robin Wolfe.

But we know what he’s going for, every minute of the way. When he plays a Chinese coolie, he wears a long a white beard and quotes from Confucius. When he plays a baby goat, he goes baa-baa. When he talks about half the globe, he shows you half of a rubber globe.

To illustrate the folly of war, a concern of the piece, he rotates little flags, with an American flag on one side and a Russian flag on the other, changing his accent from American to, oddly, German. The big finish has him singing the national anthem to the image of a mushroom cloud. (And getting some of the words wrong.)

Wolfe is either a true innocent, or a brilliant post-modern imitation of one. The former, I would guess. Like Miss Jenkins, he thinks he has a message for the world, and he has a glorious time expressing himself all over the theater. He also strikes a clean physical line--one can believe the program note that he’s a yogi.

But “Blind Stab” is a rubber-ducky, not a grown-up work. Munroe’s “Blood Is . . .” has much more discipline and originality. It also works with banal materials. But it knows they are banal, and it tries to get behind them.

It starts as a straight-faced “panel discussion” (the kind of thing you might find at a trade show) on the advantages of moving to Florida. Clean air, low property taxes, no street crime, a rich cultural life, informality. “Casual dress is acceptable for all occasions. . . .”

However, as one of the panelists pours herself a glass of water, a goldfish appears in it. The panelists also keep being dragged below the rostrum. There is a rattlesnake side to Florida--or the Florida of their unconscious--that cannot be dealt with in the rhetoric of the tourist folders.

The nightmare aspects of the piece aren’t new, but one does enjoy seeing the panel fall apart, particularly after Munroe and his two acting colleagues, Susan Falcon and Alexandra Johnson, have built up its reality so skillfully. (They even wear MOCA badges.)

There’s a surface tension, a rigor, here that Wolfe’s work lacks. Art is play, but play within bounds--not just one damn thing after another. Not Unless your unconscious can make some absolutely brilliant choices.

Next up on the Angel’s Flight series: “Peter, Paul and Harry”--i.e., Peter Bergman, Paul Krassner and Harry Shearer. Three bright guys who will doubtless have much to say about the current state of the nation. It opens July 23.

‘BLOOD IS . . .” and “BLIND STAB” Two performance art pieces, beginning the Angel’s Flight series at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Producers Scott Kelman and Alex Wright (for Pipeline Inc.) and Julie Lazar (for MOCA). Lighting Richard Hoyes, assisted by Cecile Galluzzo. Stage manager Rand Ryan. “Blood Is . . .,” created by Jan Munroe. Director Steven Keats. With Susan Falcon, Alexandra Johnson and Jan Munroe. Video performers Michael Dobo, Linda Kerr, Jan McGuire. “Blind Stab” created by Kedric Robin Wolfe. Composer Hans Anderson. Director Scott Kelman. Scenic artist Nicola Atkinson Griffith. Assistant producer Nancy Taylor. With Kedric Robin Wolfe and Hans Anderson. Plays Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Closes July 19. Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA. 250 S. Grand Ave. (213) 465-0070.