PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW : Engrossing ‘Tattle Tales’ Tells All at Highways

On first impression--that from her event at Highways on Saturday, titled “Tattle Tales”--Shel Wagner could qualify as the Sylvia Plath of performance art, non-suicidal variety.

Seldom does one see exquisite pain rendered through such poetic sensibility yet touched with a humor that makes it tolerable. Seldom does one see so strongly defined a persona as hers: an aura of glazed semiconsciousness surrounds the performers, their small-town context coming from old, popular songs and pungent, confessional voice-overs, assorted sounds of motor bikes and doors slamming.

Secrets of childhood, unfulfilled longings, abuse even, abound in Wagner’s stories--all of them conveyed deftly but with just an edge of suggestion.

Just as striking, however, is her seamless collaborative effort. In “Deadman,” for instance, created jointly by Wagner and Jeffrey Moore, the two manage to show the inner dynamics of a waltzing couple--she, at heart, values propriety, while he keeps jumping into her arms and looking for mommy, finally seizing her thumb to suck.

Her only solo, “Fishkiss,” details a fearsome father in good-guy’s clothing and spells out Wagner’s gift for narrative imagery. But in the borrowed idea of “Flying Dog Stories,” she conjures the shared intimacies of little girls mingling in a single physical realm--stepping behind Danielle Shapiro, whose strands of hair she whispers into--and makes just as powerful a presentation.

Here and elsewhere the slow-motion, swinging movement punctuating each piece is a mix of the emblematic and naturalistic that takes on a surreal effect.

Wagner’s choreography for “There’s Always One Named Simba”--with text by Moore, who performed with Chuck Burks and accordionist Abram Waterhouse--is utterly integral to this engrossing, poignant and funny tale of boy-meets-boy.