`Balcony' A Daring Offering - Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune 3/28/93 "In "The Balcony," sex and politics mingle with a surreal vengeance, part of an eerie, other worldly brothel that evolves as central figure in a social revolution and later a psycho-sick government-in-exile.

Jean Genet's troubled, uneven, but still somewhat daring classic is an orgy of degeneracy, sexual role-play and mock cruelty.  It also turns reality upside down and serves up the unappetizing notion that all of Western history and culture are illusions pawned off on the rest of us by the power elite.
 

By story's end, the figures in the brothel, in particular the pedestrian nobodies who nightly pay to pretend to be generals, bishops and other great leaders in their sex games, actually become those leaders, in a pretend government manufactured to substitute for the one destroyed in revolutionary zeal.  Genet's overriding point is unmistakable, that all leaders-social, political or religious-are stick figures whose very image of authority is the only real authority they have, or deserve.


"The Balcony," along with a lot of false turns and lost byways, also delves into the Western interrelationship among money, sex and power with unrelenting dissection.  

This 1957 work (virtually banned until 1960, by the way) is a strange, winding, puzzling and fascinating cavalcade, not to be tackled by timid artists or audiences.  No one would accuse New Crime Productions of timidity, and indeed its current revival at At the Gallery seems tailor-made for its gutsy, commedia delle' arte style. New Crime doesn't solve all of Genet's residual problems, and as a result, its dark night in a brothel of the mind, despite an onslaught of sensational imagery, has its slow moments, dull spots and missteps.

But overall its one of the group's best productions, graced for starters with a marvelous pop combo, to the side of the stage, led by composer Tom Jasek. He and his musicians deliver blaring wails and percussive drum beats, punctuating the un-reality of "The Balcony" with a gritty, earsplitting modern presence.  Lacy Tranvesticism, sadomasochistic love play, whips, see-through undies, glimpses of nudity, outrageous sex and stylistic acting are all part of the package.


The performers, ferociously energized by David Sinaiko's direction, are literally choreographed through most of the show, although in a singular way-every turn of their heads is reinforced by a drum beat. The white greasepaint faces and Allison Reeds' hallucinogenic, Frederick's of Hollywood costumes deserve mention.

So, too, in a huge cast, working together as a tightly knit ensemble, do Adele Robbins, as a stoic, Lotte Lenya-esque madame, her power lust and survival instincts driven by a clearly visible internal force, and Bill Cusack's rambunctious take as her lover-partner-nemesis".