While its title may suggest a rawness that’s of the anything-but-emotional variety, exploring intimacy – physical, artistic, and romantic – is the goal of Bob Bartlett’s latest tattoo-centric play, Bareback Ink. And it mostly succeeds, when it doesn’t allow its own mythology to get in the way.
Bareback Ink bills itself as a noir retelling of the Ganymede myth – in which Zeus assumes the form of an eagle to rape and kidnap the most handsome man in Troy, whom he brings back with him to Olympus to serve as his cupbearer – and unfortunately it never for a moment lets you forget it.
Going into the show, I was actually worried that its allusions to the source material would be too subtle, that I would be distracted by my attempts to identify the connections, knowing in advance that they existed. As it turned out, I spent most of the time trying to figure out whether the characters and audience were inhabiting the realm of mythology or a more modern setting – obviously, we wound up somewhere in between, but no one ever seemed to feel quite comfortable there.
Rather than tackling the Classical story directly, it reveals itself in increments, first centering on a young, gay hustler receiving a full-back tattoo – of Rembrant’s The Rape of Ganymede, his own life story writ large – from an older, Zen-like, asexual tattoo artist. It soon becomes apparent that, despite the banter, the come-ons, and the admonishments to stay still (“Do you want a good tattoo or a less good tattoo?”), neither man is there purely by choice, that both are essentially prisoners of an outside, unseen force. As the two become more aware – of themselves and each other – the tension and passion between them begin to build.
In this way, the performance space is perfectly suited to the material: I felt like I was locked in with them. The stark, exposed-brick walls and un-air-conditioned warehouse venue was the ideal foil for the gritty story unfolding within it, and John McAfee’s lighting, aside from a few instances during which one of the actors would get a little too lost in the darkness, enhanced the mood.
Bartlett has mentioned that when the show travels to Edinburgh in August (thanks, in part, to a successful Kickstarter campaign), that it will be presented in a pristine, white gallery space, which to my mind is far too Olympian of a setting for two characters who have been literally and metaphorically rolling around in the mud.
The only problem with an intimate space is that it isn’t forgiving of an outsized performance. As the young Ganymede (referred to only as “Canvas” in the program), D. Grant Cloyd can at times sound almost too earnest and plaintive, lacking the polished smoothness of a true hustler. DC Cathro (as “Artist”), however, brings a natural, understated quality to his performance, and the two shine the brightest when engaging with each other via dialog rather than getting lost in soliloquy. These are the times when Bartlett’s writing is also at its best and most subtle (in contrast, the audience couldn’t help but let out a self-conscious chuckle when Cloyd’s character described himself as being left “spread eagle” during an otherwise harrowing account of his first encounter with Zeus).
What Bareback Ink does absolutely right is putting a contemporary spin on the disturbing themes found within the original myth – among them youth, violation, power, pain, cycles of violence – that just happen to be extremely timely as far as this country’s psyche goes at the moment.
Like returning to an original Grimm fairy tale after having previously seen only the Disney version, the production encourages its audience to consider the very savageness of its source material and look closely at the human cost that conveniently never seems to come up in the legends. “Your body considers this a wound, an attack,” the Artist tells his Canvas about the tattooing process – but he might as well be speaking directly to the audience.
Bareback Ink runs thru July 29, 2012 at Gear Box1021 7th St, 3rd floor, NW Washington, DC.
Details and tickets
John rates this 3 out of a possible 5.
thanks for the great review! and we DO have air conditioning. 😉