Phase One: In Manhattan, a foreigner with a withered right arm makes a plea for financial aid to his country. The man’s garb is contemporary; his speech is anachronistic.
Phase Two: In South America, in the 1800s, a plantation owner gives his young daughter a miniature tea set and a knife. He also shows her a series of pictures of animals preying on each other. Years later, the plantation owner’s daughter rejects a South Carolinian suitor’s proposal of marriage. Ultimately, there is a revolution. The daughter’s slave, Berinthia, has been present in each of these scenes. In the final scene, Berinthia is alone and, sitting in the chair where we have been accustomed to seeing the daughter, she listens to the cries of revolution.
Phase Three: In the United States, in a “time approximate” setting, a black washerwoman, abandoned by her lover/husband, flees her home. Before she leaves, (but unrelated to her decision to go), she is visited by a little white girl and a knife-wielding white boy.
Phase Four: An injured Neanderthal is stalked and killed by a more predatory peer.
Phase Five: At the Haven of Peace, a deteriorating lakeside resort in a country in the throes of revolution, three “tourists” (two Americans and a South African) are murdered by terrorists.
Phase Six: In an international airport, a black American woman strikes up a conversation with a white man from a South American republic. The woman’s name is Berinthia, she likes tea, and is on her way to South Carolina.
Phase Seven: The corpse of an ox is strung with Christmas lights and sprinkled with play money.
The preceding is an outline of PING CHONG’s Nuit Blanche. What’s missing are the bridges between scenes (slides or film with taped accompaniment), almost all of which refer to the moon, which floats through Nuit Blanche with relentless diversity. Whether it is referred to through the odd banality of the American astronauts’ lunar landing or a dippy rendition of “Blue Moon,” the moon remains impervious to earthly turbulence. This is certainly not a new metaphor, but the NASA slides provide a techno-poetic context for the main concern: power in all its ramifications (political, social, sexual, racial and emotional).
Nuit Blanche consistently presents chaos as resolution. Hysteria parades as resolve; anarchy is little more than an enthusiasm for change. “Take a chance” is the message, but “things won’t get better” seems to be the only conclusion. This philosophical ambivalence is annoying; it appears to welcome change but, in the end, refuses to endorse it. The result is a middle-class shrug of the shoulders, more apolitical rowing in the waters of Lake Wishywashy.
Watching Nuit Blanche, I was reminded of how I’ve initially resisted the homemade quality in Chong’s previous work (Lazarus, Humboldt’s Current, Fear and Loathing in Gotham), only to be charmed and won over by the power that his impoverished props and costumes gradually acquire. What I haven’t been won over by are Chong’s performers, who tend toward a theatrically declamatory style better suited for the proscenium than the alternative space. Nuit Blanche contains what is, for Chong, quite a bit of dialogue. That so much of it rings false—and often includes cliches that might better be left out—is due to that old devil, technique. The odor of Adler, Chaikin and Hagen hangs heavy and makes every phrase an emphatic bid for attention.
Nuit Blanche is, however, hypnotically lovely to look at. The washerwoman sequence takes place against slides of a man walking away from a weedy tract house. Each slide is a portrait as telling and involving as the story of the plight of the woman he has left behind. The Neanderthals’ conflict is played out in silhouette against a succession of exquisite, steely blue icescapes. Also presented in silhouette is an exchange between the owner of the Haven of Peace resort and a Chinese visitor (played wordlessly by Chong). A beach umbrella tilts into the picture plane as the host discusses his shell collection; meanwhile, in the bloody foreground, the guests are being dispatched with rote efficiency. At the airport, a seemingly endless series of tail fins (their insignia growing increasingly fanciful) passes in review, generating a wonderful ballet mécanique. The final image of a sacrificial ox—with incense wafting through the air—is a potent combination of National Geographic-like documentation and Pub Tiki floor show. Who cares if it isn’t particularly smart—it’s fabulous theater.
—Richard Flood
