On the Track of the Next Big Thing : A trend watcher catches the scent of spectacle and audience participation

Where is theater going? Critics get asked the question all the time, and this critic never knows what to say. Theater isn’t an industry--yet. It is going where its individual artists want to go, and they are not all facing in the same direction.

Nor do the artists have the total say. The critics and the audience also get a vote. And they will always be a little behind the artist. It has taken 30 years for us to see that “Waiting for Godot” is indeed a play, in fact a traditional play--not a barren experiment in terminal stasis.

On the other hand, sometimes the audience turns out to be correct. Not every theatrical experiment is vindicated by time. When was the last time you took part in a “happening”? All of this makes it impossible to say where theater is going. All that one can do is say what it has been up to lately.

The most obvious difference over the theater of the recent past is the new emphasis on spectacle. Before the film era, of course, theater was the place to go for it--to the extent that Henry James worried in the 1880s that the spoken play would be shouldered out of the theater entirely.

The movies relieved the stage of the need to knock the audience’s eye out, and the old-time chariot races and reenacted sea battles went to the warehouse. But with “Cats” and “Starlight Express” and “Les Miserables” and “Phantom of the Opera,” the eye was back in the picture. The recently opened “Miss Saigon” in London is said to be the greatest spectacular of them all.

Is this a vicious trend? Not necessarily. The eye does need to have something to do in the theater: It needn’t preclude the working of the mind’s eye. The giant dump heap in “Cats”; the barricades in “Les Miz”; the candle-lit grotto in “Phantom”--all helped support the story and the score. What’s worrying is when the evening is exclusively smoke-and-mirrors, as in “Starlight Express.” That way lies Las Vegas.

Another kind of spectacular was recently delivered at Royce Hall, UCLA, by artist Robert Longo. “Dream Jumbo: Working the Absolutes” was its title. It linked five of Longo’s performance pieces (“tableaux,” to use an old-fashioned word) into a surprisingly accessible whole--surprising, in that Longo is supposed to be on the cutting edge of the visual arts.

His way of confronting the bourgeoisie, however, is give them the sort of image to which they have become accustomed, thanks to films and TV, and ask them to decode it for its underlying message of political oppression.

Whether anyone actually does this is not known to me. I did notice an audience having a very good time processing “Dream Jumbo” on the first level, as a skillful mix of screen images and living performers--sopranos, clowns, dancers, slow-motion wrestlers, all beautifully spaced and lit. It’s quite possible that the next five years will see somebody present such a dream show for a mainstream audience, and find success with it. If so, the source to credit won’t be Robert Longo, but Robert Wilson, whose tableaux go back to the 1970s.

“Dream Jumbo” was, like Wilson’s work, absolutely self-contained--an event perfectly happy to be taking place within its frame. One could imagine it being performed in an empty hall or a full one: The dynamics wouldn’t change. Which makes it the polar opposite of “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding.”

Here’s another avant-garde form gone mainstream: participatory theater. Remember when people felt daring about going onstage to mingle with the actors in the Company Theatre’s “James Joyce Memorial Liquid Theatre”? Remember when people felt weird about taking part in “Center Earth Trialz” at San Diego’s Crystal Palace Theatre?

That started to change in the mid-’80s with “Tamara,” which, incredibly, is still running in the marble mansion in Hollywood known as “Il Vittoriale.” “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” also has a real-life environment, the Park Plaza Hotel at MacArthur Park--exactly the hall that Tina’s mother might hire for a ritzy wedding reception.

As at “Tamara,” the spectator is allowed to simply walk around and follow the action. But he can also mingle with the other guests and the wedding party. Tina herself (Nancy Cassaro) might even come along and stick an olive in his mouth, with a suggestive smirk. “Don’t tell Tony, he’ll be jealous.”

What do you say to that? What do you say to Tina’s mother (Susan Varon) when she demands to see pictures of your family--and you have to admit that you don’t carry pictures in your wallet? It is all in fun, but it puts a strange responsibility on the spectator: now no longer a spectator, but a certified member of the wedding. It also induces a strange headiness--that of Alice entering the magic mirror. And it instructs you that all big social events could be this much fun, if you would only loosen up.

Is there a future for this sort of show? Certainly. “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” has already run for a year in New York, and promises to do well at the Park Plaza. We also have the seen the proliferation of the murder-mystery-weekend shows, where the viewer also gets into the game.

This kind of evening is easy to do, and terribly difficult to do well. “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” does it well. It has a hugely experienced cast--actors who know their characters so intimately that they can’t be fazed: try it, and they end up fazing you. But gently, so that you don’t feel put down.

Nasty situations can arise at such events if the improvising spectator doesn’t understand exactly the limits of the make-believe. Director David Pellegrini’s actors somehow convey these limits without coming out from behind the fiction: We all know how far we can go, and within those margins we have the time of our lives.

Other companies, other occasions might not be quite so much fun. “Uncle Luigi’s Funeral” would not, I think, have appeal. This branch of the theater-of-the-future has enormous potential, but will also require special handling. In any case, we have definitely caught up with it.