Philip Glass superfan Phelim McDermott brings a joyful homage to his hero to the New York stage this week for a limited run that celebrates the relationship between a master of modern music and a daring innovator of British theatre.
McDermott, founder of the Improbable Theatre company in England, wrote and stars in the show he titles “The Tao Of Glass,” a meditation on the role Glass played in his life, first as an inspirational artiste and musician, and later as his co-writer on a show based on the children’s book ‘In The Night Kitchen’ by Maurice Sendak.
Born into Manchester’s Irish immigrant community in the north of England in 1963, McDermott’s obsession with the American composer started early. The teenage Phelim bought the seminal Glass album “Glassworks,” and played it in his bedroom, loudly, and on repeat - to the great annoyance of his parents. A trip to London to see the Glass opera “Akhnaten” at the English National Opera further elevated McDermott’s devotion to Glass, and in his career as theatre director with Improbable, he would go on to stage three operas by the composer.
As McDermott’s title implies, his show explores in addition to Glass’s music, the Taoist philosophy and mysticism that have guided the composer since the early 1970s, when his visits to India to study with Ravi Shankar took him to the Himalayas to encounter the exiled Tibetan Buddhist community in Dharamsala. Over time, the Tao became Glass’s core belief system, and shaped the way he composed, moving his sound ever farther from western orchestral structures.
Eastern philosophies revel in the paradoxical, and McDermott’s show brings a few paradoxes of his own to his audience. The essentially one-man show has eight other performers onstage, a quartet of musicians playing the music of Glass, and a squad of silent puppeteers who use large sheets of tissue paper bearing musical notation, to create ethereal marionettes representing significant figures in McDermott’s life, including Glass himself. And his show is based on a show that never was – the death of Maurice Sendak ended the work-in-progress that would have become a Glass and McDermott opera based on “In The Night Kitchen.” But their brief collaboration fostered a lasting friendship and lingering mutual admiration - the 86-year-old composer bestowed his blessing on this show all about him by making an appearance on opening night to take a bow with the cast.
McDermott’s monologue delivery is by turns passionate, serous, and comedic - he even resorts to the mischief of addressing a common critique of Glass’s music - that it is boringly repetitive - by tersely telling the quartet onstage at one point to stop playing, as the music is beginning to annoy him. Glass music divides audiences between those with low tolerance for his endless repetitions, and those who revel in his mesmeric pulse. And for those in the latter camp, this show is a wondrous treat. “The Tao Of Glass” runs until April 8 at NYU’s Skirball Center.
