The Lastmaker

MODEL CITIZEN Goulish towers over the Hagia Sophia.

Photograph: Justin Bernhaut

Let’s just call Goat Island a performance company. Getting all tangled up in the Is-it-dance-or-theater debate will just make you sound passé… And anyway, the group will soon be no more. Classification issues will be conveniently moot once the 21-year-old collective hangs up its sneakers and its tape recorders and its wee mechanical birds. Sadly, its taxing farewell performance, The Lastmaker, hints that now is the right time to say goodbye.

Not that The Lastmaker is awful—by no means. The group makes much with little: A simple, taped-out space between bleachers looks perfectly proportioned; every prop (especially a model of the Hagia Sophia) seems well-loved and imbued with meaning. The collaged text is often clever and occasionally touching, especially when Mark Jeffery takes the stage as a swish St. Francis of Assisi (cue the tick-tock birds) thrilled to be moving comfortably without his walker. The stage design, the texts about departure, even the intentionally inexpert dancing, all seem delightfully well-honed. But the work also feels stagnant and chilly.

Director Lin Hixson and her Chicago-based collaborators—Jeffery, Karen Christopher, Matthew Goulish, Bryan Saner, Litó Walkey—muster an enormously personal production. For instance, during a 30-minute “mathematical” dance of interminable repetitions, you can almost hear their hum of meditation. Movements work, like a dervish’s spinning, to bring each performer into a heightened state. Unfortunately, what feels transcendent for the actors leaves the audience behind. Wives rubbed their restless husbands’ backs. Many of us read parts of the P.S. 122 programs we never, ever turn to. The group may mean to test our attention spans; in fact, the Goat Island website claims as much. But by turning so obsessively inward—intentionally or not—it’s made much adieu feel like nothing.