PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW : Integrity of ‘Soldier, Child, Tortured Man’

On the basketball court of First Methodist Church in Hollywood, three men of the Chicago-based Goat Island performance company execute a cycle of intense physical exercises to hoarse verbal commands.

Violent yet rhythmic, their actions suggest both athletic conditioning and military drill. However, we soon notice that everything said and done is skewed--familiar but out-of-place or exaggerated.

The words being barked sound like fragments of a sociology report--”treated like human beings,” “political ramifications”--accented, from time to time, with documentary statements: “I have never used the word hero to describe myself,” for example.

The movement usually represents nightmarish distortions of commonplace actions--elephantine stamp-walking derived from marching, for instance--frequently spiced with displays of intricate group gymnastics. Eventually, all three men assume the role of oppressor, witness and victim in a ritual that re-creates processes of brutalization in our society.

Directed by Lin Hixson (who created the work with the performers), “Soldier, Child, Tortured Man” shares thematic priorities and performance methodology with the greatest Living Theatre productions (especially “The Brig”) from a quarter-century ago. Perhaps the most punishing movement-based work to be performed on a local stage since Pina Bausch’s “Bluebeard,” it brilliantly satirizes macho force, weight and drive--but relentlessly exploits it too.

What keeps the piece compelling is not so much its ideas or the theatrical structures, but rather the non-stop, full-out, exhausting athleticism of the performers. If Matthew Goulish, Greg McCain and Timothy McCain ever behaved more like post-feminist human beings and less like crazed cave men, the piece would become just another pat expose of the jock mentality.

Indeed, a sequence drawn from the play “Mr. Roberts” flounders in diminished energy, uneven acting skills and needless literalism. We simply don’t need to have the link between male concepts of self-realization and war spelled out this effortfully this late in the evening.

However, in its best moments, Goat Island creates something as raw and pure as an authentic life experience. There is no veneer of applied art, no exhibitions of the performers’ sensitivity or cleverness that promote them as superior to their material, no attitude, no chummy asides to the Art Crowd--no special pleading whatsoever.

These guys are obviously in shape but they don’t have the proportions of dancers or athletes and they don’t have the faces or haircuts of actors. Eighties narcissism taints not one nanosecond of their work and--as they kill themselves for an audience that is Melrosed to the max--their timeless integrity comes to seem their most startling achievement.