No Great Society

Created by Elevator Repair Servce.
Dir. John Collins
With ensemble cast.
P.S. 122

by David Cote

Even in the ranks of avant-garde performers, Susie Sokol stands out as a wonderful weirdo. An ageless wisp of a woman with pencil-thin legs, deep-set dark eyes and sharp elbows that tear the air when she breaks into a spastic dance, Sokol is a founding member of Elevator Repair Service and has been a constant presence in its shows for more than a decade. Now, in the deconstructionist troupe’s pop-culture remix, No Great Society, she gets to freak out in the spotlight as she never has before: playing Beat icon Jack Kerouac.

It’s loopy fun and somehow fitting to see the macho author of On the Road played by an actor whose naughty and self-amused air calls to mind an autistic preteen boy. The loose, 80-minute piece riffs on television appearances Kerouac made in 1958 and ’69. The latter is presented first, a panel discussion about hippies from William F. Buckley’s Jr’s Firing Line. Sokol portrays Kerouac in his pathetic final phase of life: as a listless, reactionary drunk who lives with his mother in Florida. The other talking heads include a buttoned-down sociologist (Knight) and a groovy, laid-back protester (Shepherd). Ben Williams presides as the arch, mumbling Buckley. The second part involves Sokol’s energetic but gnomic interpretation of Kerouac texts, based on a 1958 recital from The Steve Allen Show. It’s hard to get inside the self-destructive Kerouac’s mind, but perhaps the younger, hepper version would have snapped his fingers to Sokol’s cockeyed impersonation.