The Brooklyn Rail

Friday Night Rat Catchers, the newest work from dance theater choreographers Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein, is excessive. Excessive in its opulence, excessive in its absurdity, excessive in its hunger. We’re dropped straight into its world—a live feed of a seventies late-night game show, where mania slowly unfolds, dissolves into emptiness, and doubles down again.

The zany and at times satirical logic of the work created by Fagan, Engelstein, and devising partner Marianne Rendón is clear before anyone steps foot onto the stage. Through an inky, shimmering purple curtain, a hand reaches out and picks up a cherry red telephone. “A burger,” the kitschy, weatherman voice requests. No bun, no cheese, nothing. Just a burger.

The hand belongs to the star of whatever cocaine-trip Twilight Zone we’re the lucky contestants of. Rendón is The Host, in an ill-fitting crepey gray suit and oversized faux-leather white loafers, grinning expectantly into a silent audience where roaring applause should be. Rendón performs the role with a tinny, plastic sincerity—cheesy and ostentatious, but there’s something in the emptiness of her voice and the gaps of silence between her words that feels just a bit off. Absurd moments, like when The Host pastes a Snickers bar onto the front of her teeth and flashes a chocolate grin, bring chuckles out of the audience. “I’m the face of this entire network,” The Host announces to us proudly, following a brief soft-soled tap interlude where she sings “Crazy” à la Patsy Cline. Are you impressed yet? Are you satisfied yet? rings in the silence.

Movement fills the stage in waves throughout the evening, swathing the audience in visual cacophonies of disco balls and groovy music, before it hollows out again. Fagan transforms from a sexy on-stage assistant to a grown-up baby, with high kicks and giddy jumps flashing a diaper to the audience. After an exhausting dance sequence, in which she pants breathlessly through her jazz squares and marches, Fagan collapses into a chair with diaper on full display, the rest of the stage falling into darkness. The one-sided conversation that follows sounds like something you probably said to your group of friends last week. Fagan suggests that they go somewhere for drinks and a light bite in between sloppily shoving her face with fruit loops. “You know,” she says, eyes boring into the audience with hardly concealed mania, a band about to snap, “drinks and a light bite.”

Some motifs and metaphors crystallize into narrative, like when Engelstein sneaks onto the stage in a trench coat, dropping rocks from her hands, pockets, and pants. They hit the stage with an echo that pierces the room like a piano note. She sheds tension as they drop, contorting and twisting, until, ultimately, she straightens up in a smart red suit and congratulates everyone on a “fantastic fourth quarter” and other corporate lexicon-babble. Other images are less clear—like when Fagan and Engelstein tangle over one another to sip out of various containers taped to the back wall, like hamsters in a cage. Pockets such as these feel like the faucet of experimentation was allowed to flow freely onto the stage and abandon a crafted narrative. Less meticulous and sublimely spontaneous, this doesn’t betray the hunger that permeates the work like a pulse, a sense that they are always craving more, and more, and more.

Rendón is what anchors the moments of funky, absurd fun in a more sinister undercurrent. The Host begins to crack the artifice ever so slightly. She picks up the soft-soled tap again, scuffling plasticky white loafers as she calls out various prizes we have the chance to win, like a brand new iPhone. The Host interrupts herself to rant at the cement back wall, repeating her earlier speech of being the face of the network, but now it’s manic. I’m reminded of Howard Beale, a charismatic news anchor who absolutely loses it during his show in the 1976 film Network. The Host of Friday Night Rat Catchers recovers without a beat. She shuffles, pastes on a smile, and calls out the next prize: “Two-hundred and fifty dollars.”

The come-down from a sequined disco dance break—where Engelstein hilariously crushes fruit loops under a stiletto, cuts the dust into a line, and snorts it—hits the show like a hammer. Rendón sits on The Host’s stool, plastic smile gone, staring absently in a blue spotlight. She pulls a mound of mousey hair from a duffle, placing it over her face, and begins to sing “Crazy” again; this time it’s empty, hollowed out. The Host pulls back a glittering curtain, and on a silver platter sits a burger. We’re brought back to the cherry red phone call that opened the show, the one that elicited chuckles from the audience when Rendón requested, “Just a burger.” She discards the bun, and puts the patty on her hair-mound head. No one is laughing now.