‘Riot’ and the Art of Kitsch as Protest

NEW YORK — The angry art of protest is flourishing these days, and its forms are as myriad as the grievances it gives voice to: marches, rallies, occupations, boycotts, black evening wear for televised awards ceremonies. Then there is the popular retro-disco-circus protest, featuring family-friendly nudity.

What? Never heard of that last one?

Well, if it sounds like a communal activity you might want to be involved in (and be warned, it involves pastel spandex and the music of a-ha), then boogie on down to the NYU Skirball Center in Greenwich Village. There, through Saturday night, a group of acrobats, poets, dancers and one tall drag queen are asking their audience to make love, not war, in an exceedingly cheery revue with the rowdy name “Riot.”

This rose-colored response to a mean, gray world is the work of Thisispopbaby, a Dublin-based performance troupe that specializes in what might be called agitpop, and is a presentation with the Irish Arts Center. This Hibernian import inflects familiar staples of contemporary entertainment with an Irish accent.

So dance, whether of the balletic or break varieties, tends to slip, as if by conditioned reflex, into the knee-raising style Americans know from “Riverdance”; a penny whistle is sounded; rap is recited as a Joycean stream-of-consciousness; and a Roman Catholic priest (who would appear to be naked under his robes) shows up, as does his personal savior, Jesus.

Now if this sounds more impudent than insurrectionist, you should know that the show — created and directed by Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon — has grave matters on its mind. Our Gaelic rapper-in-chief, Emmet Kirwan, reels off tongue-tripping spiels that speak of bleak times “that crave the drop of artistic resistance.”

What he and his team have created, he continues, is “the last hidden analogue place,” free from surveillance and dictatorial media, where we are free to be ourselves and dance, dance, dance. Or as various cast members keep telling us, rather frantically: “Enjoy yourselves! Have a good time! Enjoy yourselves!”

There is, admittedly, a forced levity to such exhortations, and I don’t think they’re meant to signal the underlying desperation of a latter-day Weimar decadence. Featuring naughty strippers, an Abba-ish quartet of mellifluously keening vocalists, a cameo guest star (mine was novelist Irvine Welsh) and some airborne gymnastics, “Riot” doesn’t seem to have an ironic bone in its bendy body. (Camp, yes, but camp is what occurs when irony has been exhausted.)

Designed with an emphasis on hard-candy colors and metallic shine by Niall Sweeny (set) and James David Seaver (costumes), “Riot” evokes those happily cheesy variety shows that surface in off-hours British television, or perhaps an entry in the Eurovision talent contest. (Evidently, Thisispopbaby has come close to being a contender in that competition.)

In other words, there’s no shame here in being tacky or outright kitschy. A pair of fraternal dancers called the Lords of Strut announce their intentions of taking “you to a place in time when cool had a very different meaning, and better hair.” Which is the prelude to an acrobatic ballet set to a-ha’s “Take on Me.”

These same Lords (whose civilian names are Philip Connaughton and Cian Kinsella) provide the single sequence that registers as truly subversive. That’s the one in which audience members are recruited to flagellate a loin-cloth-clad Jesus with bright foam batons, and even that feels far too jolly to be a true sacrilege.

Weaving in and out of the festivities is the professed “gender discombobulist” Panti (also known as Panti Bliss), who towers in stilettos and second-skin dresses and tells an autobiographical tale of empowerment about the little boy she once was, who dreamed of becoming Farrah Fawcett. This leads to the invocation: “Dream! Because dreams are the architects of the future.”

Perhaps that media-driven universe that is excoriated here has made a cynic of me, but I far preferred Panti presenting the same everything-is-permissible message in a more caustic vein. Singling out a middle-aged man in the audience, she asked: “Do you want to be me or to sleep with me? There is no wrong answer.”

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Production Notes:

‘Riot’

Through Saturday at NYU Skirball Center, Manhattan; 212-998-4941, nyuskirball.org. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Credits: Created and directed by Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon; composed by Alma Kelliher; original text by Emmet Kirwan and Panti; additional text by Michael Harding; designed by Niall Sweeney; costumes by James David Seaver; lighting by Mark Galione; movement direction by Suzanne Cleary and Peter Harding. Presented by the NYU Skirball Center and the Irish Arts Center.

Cast: Philip Connaughton, Suzanne Cleary, Peter Harding, Ronan Brady, Megan Riordan, Adam Matthews, Cian Kinsella, Panti, Emmet Kirwan, Alma Kelliher, Nicola Kavanagh and special guest Irvine Welsh.