Michael Gordon and Richard Foreman’s ‘What to Wear’ revival sells out at BAM

All four performances of What to Wear, the collaboration between composer Michael Gordon and the experimental theater director Richard Foreman, are sold out at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, the New York Times critic reported. The critic described the piece as an absurdist post‑rock pageant about clothes—and golf‑playing ducks.

Premiered at CalArts in 2006 and revived by Paul Lazar and Annie‑B Parson of Big Dance Theater as part of the Prototype Festival, the work offers a visual riot of tartans and stripes, cones and pyramids, checkerboard borders and diagonally strung fishing lines but no conventional plot or message.

The central figure, Madeline X, is sung by four performers (two sopranos, a mezzo and a tenor) while a tartan‑clad chorus supplies props and forms a living barrier; large plexiglass panels create a literal fourth wall. Musically, the critic noted amplified singers often in a forced straight tone, intrusions of Richard Foreman’s recorded voice, and a Bang on a Can sound world heavy on electric guitars and repeated ostinatos; the score unfolds in discrete blocks that thicken and stop abruptly.

On resale sites, the critic said, tickets could still be found for about $700. Foreman, who died last year at 87, looms over this revival, which the critic said now reads in part as a memorial and as a marker of an experimental theater tradition that prized disorientation over explanation.

Key Topics

Culture, Michael Gordon, Richard Foreman, Harvey Theater, Prototype Festival, Madeline X