Lulu v7: Aspects of a Femme Fatale is an overwhelming exploration of sex and death. And intellectual theatre
04 May 2018

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Jeremy Mimnagh

Hours later, I am still puzzling over the experience of Lulu v7: Aspects of a Femme Fatale. As thought-provoking theatre it is a triumphant success, but I'm not sure that if I didn't have to write a review, if it would still be lingering. There are so many ideas and images layered onto an elaborate staging that sorting out what they meant or how they connect is a theatre nerd's orgasm. For much of the audience, including myself, it was bewildering. For anyone unfamiliar with Wedekind's play (or who hadn't read the copious notes in the program) Lulu v7 would be upgraded to baffling.

The first half begins with a narrator giving a brief history of Frank Wedekind's sex life, particularly his infatuation with a "Rachel." Wedekind becomes a successful playwright, Rachel becomes the inspiration for Lulu aka Pandora's Box: A Monster Tragedy. We are then introduced to the actors in a casting call film montage while they read, sarcastically, the description of the role they have been cast as. That segment is funny, brisk and sets up an intriguing backstage/onstage dynamic. Then a deconstructed version of Lulu begins.

This section is entertaining if barely coherent as it veers from vaudeville to melodrama to Brechtian to slapstick to pompous. Rachel has been referred to as as delicious as an "unpeeled apple," so apples appear until they become pomegranates, presumably because pomegranates bleed more like humans. The backstage/onstage theme is continued with the use of nano-dance and the conspicuous movement of props (of which there are many including much food. Muffins flung at the audience earn a round of applause) by both the performers and a frazzled looking stagehand/stage manager. Costume changes happen onstage or in view. Voices are distorted through microphones, looped and overlap with pre-recordings.

All of the chaos in telling an already chaotic story has to have a point. The second half attempts to explain by delving into the process of creating Lulu v7. Wedekind presents Rachel with the manuscript of Lulu which she tosses in the air without reading - a very funny line - and the performers and creatives then begin tossing ideas into the air as to just what Lulu v7 means. What it means not only literally, but also in a theatrical context, a feminist context, a queer context, and probably a lot of contexts that just didn't register with me personally. The intellectual rigor is accompanied by half-hearted choreography or movement, more costumes and symbolism, abundant nudity by the entire cast, and images striving to be striking.

Valerie Buhagiar who showed in Boticelli in the Fire and Sunday in Sodom that she can hold an audience rapt with just words, pontificates from atop a Cirque du Soleil wedding dress, perhaps attempting to tie the clown/Pierrot metaphor into the whole. Christopher Morris, also powerful in Boticelli in the Fire and Sunday in Sodom, ties Lulu's fate to the Pulse nightclub shooting in an intense and pointed monologue that inexplicably indicts theatre and specifically Buddies. It also inexplicably takes place in a blackout which may be a metaphor for something but brutally diminishes the impact. The audience can't help but be distracted by the goings-on backstage which, inexplicably, is dimly lit. 

Richard Lam (Hello Again, Peter Pan, Heart of Steel) fares better with a tour de force monologue exploring desire and death by linking guilt and the Village serial killer to Lulu's fate. It is chilling, comical and heartbreaking. And Lam nails it, creating chills when he describes dating apps and "gripping each other in the shadows" where, of course, "predators follow."

Slowly the disparate images and ideas begin to coalesce into what may be a personal interpretation: the struggle to reconcile sex, love and death. To reconcile the violence of Lulu's fate with the looming omnipresence of our own. Forcing the audience to make the connections is clever and moving, but then the theatrespeak begins again with the performers forced to attempt to inject emotion into monologues about the intellectual and political underpinnings of the creation of Lulu v7. I admit I tuned out, but those aforementioned theatre nerds may very well have begun masturbating at that point. The creators of Lulu v7 certainly were.

All of the cast is committed and dig into their parts fiercely. The audience may not be clear on the ideas or action but the performers are deadly serious, whether waving plastic Jack the Ripper knifes, dressed as phobias, swilling champagne, or stark naked. Rose Tuong (All's Well That Ends Well) breathes life into a cipher of a Lulu who is more symbol than character. Buhagiar delights with a drag king vaudeville routine that is comic perfection. She is almost upstaged by Chala Hunter (Wormwood) who is a lusty drag king painter who gets zinged with multiple fine art references. 

Craig Pike is a solid sexy Wedekind, a tortured writer, the most engaging clown, and looks damn fine in a jumpsuit unzipped to the waist. Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah (Bang Bang, Prince Hamlet, Contempt) demonstrates just what made Rachel so inspirational, has impeccable comic timing, and still looks fabulous when dressed as a giant squid or, as she confesses, what may be a giant butt plug. The return of Sky Gilbert (To Myself at 28) to the stage is memorable for the resonance of his timbre, his apparent fragility, and the delicious dichotomy of his conjuring up a butch sexist pig.

This is the seventh, and presumably penultimate, exploration of the Lulu text created by the red light district theatre company composed of Ted Witzel (La Ronde, The Marquise of O, All's Well That Ends Well, Mr Truth), Susanna Fournier and Helen Yung, during a four-year residency at Buddies. Maybe this version was all six previous versions mashed together (I did not see any of the previous incarnations), as it appears that no idea or whim has been discarded or pruned. A lot of resources and talent have been lavished on Lulu v7, and my fried neurons are still making connections and having debates. But after four years, seven versions, and three hours plus nightly, perhaps it is time to let Lulu's ghost rest, we will be puzzling her out for centuries ahead.