Nobody likes to be chained to the wall by somebody else's imagination. The twentieth century was not kind to Friedrich Nietzsche. He died just as it began, but his work lived on to be embraced by all the wrong people. Although he had disavowed his friendship with the composer Richard Wagner over the latter's anti-Semitism, his own sister insinuated his philosophy into the Nazi propaganda machine where it was maneuvered into supporting notions of nationalism, militarism and of course racism. Although the century brought him the attention he always expected to receive, it no doubt left him spinning in his grave.
Word shards fill the visual landscape and, as cued, chalk scribbles, easily erased, abound.
Do not, however, expect either lucid exposition or fresh observations. Voices here, which would be easily heard without amplification, are rendered through Rent -style head mikes that have much the same distancing effect as Foreman's familiar use of clear plastic sheets to separate the audience from the very proximate stage. It's only through this means that one could possibly hope to compress not only Nietzsche's life and life's work, but what follows in its wake, into this frantic seventy minutes of theater. Trying to describe the sensory assault Foreman and his performers hurl at the audience is, ultimately, pointless. I've never gone to see one of Richard Foreman's annual shows more than once, but I've always felt I would need to.