Wildly wacky and whimsical, "Sister Follies: Between Two Worlds", rests on a singular, spectacular conceit. For the centennial of the Abrons Arts Center, a gem of a theater on the Lower East Side, Basil Twist, winner of a recent MacArthur Prize, imagined the ghosts of the Lewisohn sisters, performers and patrons of the arts from 1915. As the curtain opens, the sisters fly, circling one another, bickering competitively as only sisters can do. Their images also are also projected onto the proscenium where they continue their sibling rivalry and narrate. Joey Arias and Julie Atlas Muz inhabit these roles on the ground, performing "Jephthah's Daughter" and other avant garde performances from that time. Jonothon Lyons, an actor with amazing pecs, and a cast of puppets, Basil Twist's métier, complete the sensational scene, an assemblage from the Bible.
The Lewisohn sisters, Alice and Irene were historic figures. Alice even hung out with Jung in Zurich, and Irene was a founder of the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. In my fantasy about Basil Twist and this sister act, he is influenced by the midcentury "bizarraries" commissioned by John Myers, Managing Editor of "View" magazine, and performed in Miss Spivey's loft, perhaps even Jane Bowles' puppet play about two sisters, "A Quarreling Pair."
The music is something of a mashup. In one of my favorite numbers, the visual is a ship crossing the Atlantic, against a starry night accented by a giant luminescent moon, when the sisters go on vacation. Irene appears on one deck singing, "Go Ask Alice." Alice appears on the other, singing a lyric to the tune of Paul McCartney's "Michelle." Their variation on the Yiddish classic "The Dybbyk," set in a graveyard is Halloween-ready, complete with flimsy, gauzy ghosts.
On the night we attended, Joey Arias greeted fans in the lobby, wearing something of a tracksuit, Jurassic Park hat, and full doe-eyed makeup. The run, which was to end on Halloween night, had already been extended to Nov. 7. And after, this downtown performance artist, spawned in the decadent '70's goes to LA to perform in The Red Cat, and looks ahead to an art opening that will include work by Keith Haring, Klaus Nomi, and other icons of a bygone era.
A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.