| I like Taylor Mac, but BARK OF MILLIONS was a disappointment. Matt River’s score is dynamically rich and varied, but the governing idea here—a song about a significant queer figure for every year since Stonewall—is conceptually blurry and Mac’s lyrics in particular are disjointed and difficult to parse. It’s no help that more often than not they're inaudible. In some introductory remarks, Mac advised the audience that, among other things, we likely wouldn’t hear all the words and that we shouldn’t worry about it (take that, NY Times!) But really? Maybe this would be faintly ok if there was something more to see other than Machine Dazzle’s typically wondrous, phantasmagorical costumes, but this is a very loosely staged four hour song cycle. There’s not much to see or, literally, hear and so the show is wearisome. As always, Mac handily generates warmth and goodwill, but the kind of clarity of purpose and presentation that he brought to his revelatory, glorious 24 DECADE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC is, sorry to say, missing here. |
