On Thursday night I saw Dueling Harps, a sort of conceptual performance art concert by Ann Magnuson and Adam Dugas at the Abrons Arts Center, and reviewed it for CultureVulture.
“It was the kind of high-concept show that’s perfect for a late-night, booze-lubricated, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants club gig at a place like Club 57 on St. Mark’s Place, where Magnuson and cohorts like Kenny Scharf and John Sex threw theme parties like ‘Putt-Putt Reggae’ and the punk-rock quiz show ‘Name That Noise.’ But mounted as a theater production with real costumes and lights and musical arrangements, on a famous stage where Orson Welles and Martha Graham had performed (as an awestruck Magnuson acknowledged), Dueling Harps didn’t hold up.”
You can read the entire review online here. I have a lot of affection for Magnuson, based on seeing her work as an emerging East Village artist back in the 1980s, so I was sorry not to have liked the show more. You can read the feature story I wrote about her for the Village Voice in 1985 here.
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