"DRINKING & WRITING," The Neo-Futurists at T’s Bar and Restaurant
BY LUCIA MAURO
What better place to do a show about literary lushes than at an actual bar? So in "Drinking & Writing," the Neo-Futurists invite audiences to pull up a stool in the back room of T’s Bar and Restaurant in Andersonville (a classy and creative dining establishment) to wade through the myth-provoking phenomenon of alcoholic authors.
This original environmental docudrama is written and performed with cerebral yet light-headed exactness by Sean Benjamin, Steve Mosqueda and Diana Slickman. Their attempts to decipher the eternal allure of booze and artists are noble and precise. But, in its current quote-heavy state, "Drinking & Writing" comes across as more of an academic lecture that happens to be set in a bar rather than a fluid and focused performance piece that should entertain at the same time it expounds on Charles Bukowski’s belief that "drinking is a form of suicide."
In addition, the trio injects information on the five stages of intoxication and even recounts the history of fermentation. In fact, a point-by-point description of the scientific effects of alcohol inadvertently transforms the bar into a chemistry lab – an especially heady tactic that runs counter to audiences whose heads are probably spinning from all the beer and wine they’ve guzzled.
Because the performers jump between quoting Dorothy Parker and Jack Kerouac, admitting their own attraction to the bottle and dissecting alcohol-related disorders (like liver disease and brain shrinkage), it’s difficult to get a handle on their mission. They fall victim to too much telling and not enough showing. The fragmented nature of this 75-minute piece also creates confusion over whether they are celebrating famed authors under the influence or presenting a cautionary tale about these people’s ultimately unfulfilled lives.
Of the three performers, Benjamin remains the most secure with a well-crafted air of casual believability. Mosqueda, while charismatic, tends toward a stilted delivery (even when he’s hanging from the bar’s wooden beams, a.k.a. Jim Beam). And Slickman, a coolly intelligent artist, does not yet appear comfortable traversing the tonal shifts of her lines.
The Neo-Futurists have cultivated an appealing rough-hewn style that falls somewhere between a school project, a museum exhibit and winkingly satiric performance art. But "Drinking & Writing" – which qualifies as all of the above– gets bogged down in too many facts and belabored musings, even if some of those facts are cleverly read off of paper coasters.
There are individual moments, however, that strike a chord. For instance, Mosqueda’s discussion of beer as a "situational drink" is smart and amusing; and Slickman’s rhapsodizing about the sense of order the chaotic tavern environment provides – most noticeably in its neat rows of bottles – is sharply honed. Mosqueda’s hilarious, if slightly inaudible, video of real bar patrons talking about why they drink includes one astute man who remarks how writers can come up with good ideas when they’re drinking, but can’t remember them once they start writing.
Yet, overall, the Neo-Futurists’ exploration of why our society idealizes dysfunctional artists gets diluted in the performers’ ponderous quotes from the "Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald" and the earliest incarnations of grain alcohol. "Drinking & Writing" has the potential to be a witty analysis of the pop appeal of inebriated writers who don’t slur their words in print. But, right now, it comes very close to driving one to drink.•
The Neo-Futurists’ production of "Drinking & Writing" runs through November 23 at T’s Bar and Restaurant, 5025 N. Clark. Tickets: $8-$12. Call 773-275-5255 or log onto www.neofuturists.org.
