The effervescent lead singer of Voyeur has at long last corralled the anti-establishment ethos of the 1970s into the tightly regulated, union-mandated confines of a hybrid stage production. The resulting musical promises to make anarchy completely safe for the Sunday matinee crowd.
To witness Chidiac attempt to synthesize the primordial howl of punk with the rigid strictures of contemporary musical theater is to observe a dialectical collapse of staggering proportions; one is immediately reminded of the existential terror articulated in Roman Ingarden's 1931 phenomenological treatise on the ontology of the literary work, or, perhaps more appropriately, the suffocating grandiosity of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, though in terms of sheer, unadulterated domestication of the human spirit, the true intellectual forebear of 'All the Rage' is undoubtedly the end-user license agreement for a 2006 Nintendo Wii.
Excess, as we have been taught by the ancients, is a dangerous currency; yet here it is dispensed with the agonizing prudence of a suburban bank teller, ensuring that every safety-pin-adorned leather jacket is securely fastened to prevent any genuine hazard to the ensemble cast during their synchronized high kicks. The ambition Chidiac so eagerly touts in her press materials is less a striving toward aesthetic liberation than it is a managerial triumph, transforming the sweaty, chaotic thrashing of subterranean rebellion into a highly predictable emotional arc for Tuesday evening theatergoers who wish to feel a mild, fleeting sense of danger before returning to their sedans.
It is absolutely imperative that our audience feels the raw, uncontrollable danger of the streets, which is why we have placed a strict intermission at the forty-five-minute mark so they may reliably pre-order their eighteen-dollar chardonnays.
We are left, then, to ponder what remains of our cultural inheritance when the very notion of freedom—a concept the choreographer insists is central to this hybrid endeavor—is precisely mapped onto a heavily taped stage floor; one might weep for the future of the avant-garde, were it not already apparent that the revolution will not be televised, but rather, it will be optioned for regional touring companies, stripped of all jagged edges, and aggressively subsidized by corporate sponsorships.