El Beh

There are evenings in the theater when one feels not merely entertained but altered—mysteriously unfastened from the ordinary mechanisms of perception and delivered into some older, stranger chamber of human experience. Signature Theatre’s revival of Heather Christian’s astonishing "Animal Wisdom," now directed with ecstatic precision by Keenan Tyler Oliphant, belongs emphatically to that rare category. To call it a musical is technically accurate in the same way that calling a cathedral a building is technically accurate. What Christian has fashioned is less a stage work than a séance disguised as an oratorio, a requiem disguised as autobiography, and a communal rite disguised—very loosely—as theater. The evening begins with a sly acknowledgment of its own displacement. This piece, we are informed, was intended for a ruined church or some other “holy space,” though the observation quickly becomes theological rather than logistical: theaters, after all, are continually deconsecrated and reconsecrated. By the time the performance ends, one understands precisely what Christian means. The Romulus Linney Courtyard has ceased to function as a conventional performance venue. It has become a sanctum for grief, memory, and ecstatic release. [more]