Time Out New York February 9, 2006

Susie Sokol, Ben Williams. Photo by Paula Court

No Great SocietyPress

No Great Society

Created by Elevator Repair Servce.
Dir. John Collins
With ensemble cast.
P.S. 122

by David Cote

Even in the ranks of avant-garde performers, Susie Sokol stands out as a wonderful weirdo. An ageless wisp of a woman with pencil-thin legs, deep-set dark eyes and sharp elbows that tear the air when she breaks into a spastic dance, Sokol is a founding member of Elevator Repair Service and has been a constant presence in its shows for more than a decade. Now, in the deconstructionist troupe’s pop-culture remix, No Great Society, she gets to freak out in the spotlight as she never has before: playing Beat icon Jack Kerouac.

It’s loopy fun and somehow fitting to see the macho author of On the Road played by an actor whose naughty and self-amused air calls to mind an autistic preteen boy. The loose, 80-minute piece riffs on television appearances Kerouac made in 1958 and ’69. The latter is presented first, a panel discussion about hippies from William F. Buckley’s Jr’s Firing Line. Sokol portrays Kerouac in his pathetic final phase of life: as a listless, reactionary drunk who lives with his mother in Florida. The other talking heads include a buttoned-down sociologist (Knight) and a groovy, laid-back protester (Shepherd). Ben Williams presides as the arch, mumbling Buckley. The second part involves Sokol’s energetic but gnomic interpretation of Kerouac texts, based on a 1958 recital from The Steve Allen Show. It’s hard to get inside the self-destructive Kerouac’s mind, but perhaps the younger, hepper version would have snapped his fingers to Sokol’s cockeyed impersonation.