Fringe Review: The Body Lautrec

By Wendy Rosenfield

for the Inquirer

There's often a direct line drawn between the artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Andy Warhol: their personal oddities and illnesses, their embrace of advertising as art, their affection for depicting quotidian moments in the lives of the demimonde. However, Mary Tuomanen and Aaron Cromie's The Body Lautrecfocuses less on Lautrec the artist and more on Lautrec the invalid outcast, with mixed results.

Since this is a Cromie project, there are puppets, but they are used sparingly, which is a shame. Depicting Lautrec's physical challenges in the most obvious manner, the puppets are skeletons of varying sizes, one of whom reenacts the childhood mishap that broke his legs, which never grew. Cromie already shows this, with a Chaplin-esque waddle.

There are countless missed opportunities here for placing Lautrec among his fascinating circle of contemporaries and making good use of Cromie's considerable puppetry skills, as well as Tuomanen's usually complex, intense direction - which The Body Lautrec's focus on the artist's surroundings, rather than his psychology, renders mostly diffuse.

Instead, we meet a much diminished Lautrec, who awakens on the floor, amid empty liquor bottles, struggling to stand and prepare for another day of drinking and drawing at the brothel (though, curiously, there is no mention of the Moulin Rouge, his favorite haunt). We meet, through a trio of actresses, composites of his favorite subjects: prostitutes, singers, and dancers, who were often all three at once. The women decline along with Lautrec, suffering with the syphilis that would eventually kill him too, at age 36.

Throughout this preview performance, Cromie's Lautrec appeared a kind, sensitive soul, perennially outside the loving embrace of anyone besides his mother. But we learned little about him, his place among the post-impressionists, why his work mattered, or even, at the very least, his odd friendship with Vincent van Gogh, whose mental illness placed him even further beyond the circle of human companionship and empathy than physically disabled Lautrec.

Of course, it's fair to say that's not the play Cromie and Tuomanen wanted to create. But while the piece has lots redeeming qualities - Heath Allen's original music, Maria Shaplin's lighting, which re-creates the glaring, underlit faces of Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge, Kate Raines' brave, naked performance, and Cromie's gentle interpretation of the artist - it's also fair to ask, considering all the far more interesting details they chose to paint out of Lautrec's larger picture, "Why not?"

The Body Lautrec Through Sunday at the Caplan Studio, University of the Arts, 211 S. Broad St., 16th floor.

Tickets: $20-$25. www.FringeArts.com.