Laurie Anderson is back at BAM with another multimedia examination of the personal and the political (photo by Leland Brewster)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St.
Through October 3, $20-$60
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Examining the twenty years of her life she has spent sleeping, Laurie Anderson’s new show, DELUSION, running at BAM’s Harvey Theater through October 3, consists of approximately twenty short mystery plays that move smoothly between the personal and the poltical, an intimate multimedia work about dreams and the state of the nation. Commissioned for the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, DELUSION features some of Anderson’s sharpest writing in years, performed in her unique talk-singing style either as herself or as deep-voiced alter ego Fenway Bergamot. Anderson glides between several microphones on a stage that includes video projections on a loveseat, shredded paper, a small scrim, and a large screen in back, depicting leaves flying in the wind, smoke drifting endlessly, a chalkboard filled with hard-to-decipher words and images, moonscapes, a child witnessing her mother’s death, and giant live shots of Anderson herself, playing her specially made violin. Joined by Colin Stetson on bass saxophone and Eyvind King on a more traditional violin, both men primarily seen in silhouette, Anderson, dressed in her trademark white shirt and thin black tie, tells jokes and stories about age, memory, Iceland, nineteenth-century Russian space theorist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, punctuation, and her own heritage. The centerpiece of the show is “Another Day in America,” from Anderson’s latest album, the just-released HOMELAND; “And so finally here we are, at the beginning of a whole new era, the start of a brand new world,” she sings as Bergamot. “And now what? How do we start? How do we begin again? . . . And so which way do we go?” Throughout the ninety-minute performance, Anderson, who has previously staged such pieces as THE END OF THE MOON, SONGS AND STORIES FROM MOBY DICK, EMPTY PLACES, and the seminal UNITED STATES: PARTS I-IV at BAM, is warmer and friendlier than ever, filled with charm and good humor, making strong eye contact with the audience as she delves into fascinating topics with a wink and a knowing smile.