CARNAL NATION

Summer in NYC is always the sexiest time of year, so to me it made hot and sweaty sense that following on the high heels of Shakespeare in the Park's Anne Hathaway Bard vehicle Twelfth Night, arrived The Bacchae, the Euripides tragedy directed by The Public Theater's former artistic director Joanne Akalaitis with an original score by her former husband Philip Glass.It starred miscast cutie pie Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening, Hair) as the god Dionysus who whips his Theban female worshippers—a.k.a. The Bacchae, which has a better ring to it than Dionysus-heads—into a lustful frenzy.This in turn stokes the ire of the uptight king of Thebes, Pentheus, played by the usually nuanced Anthony Mackie, who instead chose to channel the god of bellowing Al Pacino.With a setup like this it's nearly a given that things take a turn for the worst both onstage and within the Greek drama.

It's helpful to remember that last summer The Bacchae was also staged in New York, though that time around by the National Theatre of Scotland with Alan Cumming taking on the role of the lascivious lead.I wish I'd caught that production instead.Cumming honed his carnal chops as The Emcee in Cabaret so I've no doubt that—like Tim Curry who also transcended notions of strict gender and sexuality to become sexuality incarnate as Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show—his Dionysus would have been a believable blast to watch.Instead Akalaitis decided to cast Groff whose appeal is less raw primal than pure innocence. Who knew Dionysus was a virgin?

Indeed, the thundering music by Philip Glass and Kaye Voyce's bright African-inspired, orange-and-red costumes for the chorus were the only hints of the dangerous, playing-with-the-fire-of-the-gods aspect that's at the lewd heart of The Bacchae.There was simply no heat from either the lackluster performances, sparse scenic design or slow as molasses staging.In the playbill interview Akalaitis is quoted as saying, "I always feel the kind of theater I'm interested in doing is when the audience leaves feeling disturbed and nauseous."Perhaps during her radical, avant-garde, Mabou Mines theater days with Glass this production would have had audience members screwing and puking in the aisles.But that was decades ago, and since then the theater world has seen the likes of the Quentin Tarantino of the stage Martin McDonagh, whose Broadway production of The Pillowman had to be stopped after an audience member collapsed on the night I saw it.Talk about disturbing.

The only shock the night I saw The Bacchae came when Central Park's rowdy wildlife decided to put on a show of their own. The 90-minute performance (which felt like it lasted a good hour more) was interrupted every fifteen minutes or so by female shrieks followed by whole sections of the audience leaping out of their seats, as what I assumed was a raccoon or two ran rampant around their feet, perhaps in a Dionysian mating dance of their own .Now that's entertainment.

On a more fortunate note, this fall brings the Great White Way opening of the Daniel Craig-Hugh Jackman, must-see jerk-off play of the season, A Steady Rain. Who do I have to blow to get tickets to this thing? I'm hoping and praying to Dionysus it's Craig and Jackman.