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IMPRESSIONS: 20th Anniversary of Richard Foreman's and Michael Gordon’s "What to wear" at BAM

Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, Creative Directors

Direction, Libretto, and Production: Richard Foreman

Music: Michael Gordon  //  Music Direction: Alan Pierson

Creative Direction: Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson   //  Costume design (original and current): E.B. Brooks

Scenic and props recreator: Michael Darling  //  Lighting design: Joe Levasseur  //  Sound design: Garth MacAleavey  //  Creative producer: Beth Morrison

 

Performed by: Principals: Sarah Frei, Sophie Delphis, Hai-Ting Chinn, and Morgan Mastrangelo. Vocal ensemble: Kira Dills-DeSurra, Jordan Jones, Kaileigh Riess, Leilah Rosen, Weiyu Wang, and Zen Wu. Movement Ensemble: devika wickremesinghe, Hallie Chametzky, Chloe Claudel, Lindy Fines, Celeste Goldes, Addie Levandowski, Lilly Lorber, Annika Mankin. Special guest: St. Vincent. Bang on a Can All-Stars: Darian Donovan Thomas, Arlen Hlusko, Lizzie Burns, Mark Stewart, David Cossin, Vicky Chow, Ken Thomson. 

 

Harvey Theater at BAM 

January 15-18, 2026

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On the checkerboard-bordered stage of BAM’s Harvey Theatre, splashed in all the glory of a cubist take on Alice in Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts, Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon’s skittering rock opera What to wear propels itself through a duck-centered ritual of mockery.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of What to wear’s Los Angeles premiere at CalArts in 2006. BAM’s production, the piece’s New York premiere, is a faithful remount of the original under the creative direction of Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, replicating the physical production and much of Foreman’s staging with help from archival videos and original team members E.B. Brooks (costumes), Michael Darling (technical director), and Sarah Frei (soprano). 

Madeline X, the subject of the piece insomuch as there is one, is a “perverse, meticulous, [and] clever” woman preoccupied with her appearance. The production’s four principal singers share the burden of embodying such an enigmatic woman who leaves even “experts” confused, in wire-rimmed eyeglasses and champagne silk adorned with sashes and cameo brooches. Madeline X is a complicated, possibly ugly woman who “lives in a world of lies,” though this may itself be a lie. The space we’re in is hers, though she doesn’t seem to control the whirring ensemble of courtesans who populate her world, a fleet of masked maids in tartan kilts commanding a fleet of giant ducks, each greater than the last. The four principal singers are joined by a vocal chorus and a movement chorus, who buzz around the stage like an animatronic cuckoo clock cycling through the hours of the day. Both choruses conduct themselves like rude children playing monks, blending stretches of solemnity with bursts of lewdness. 

From their cage on stage left, hemmed in by skull-topped spikes, the band (the excellent Bang on a Can All-Stars, led by Alan Pierson) plays doggedly on, looping phrases until they distort and then shifting gears entirely, leaping nimbly from dirge to dissonant staccato. In one particular moment, the entire chorus sings a cappella, pleading for answers to questions about their own stupidity and which alphabet to use; they are a wall of sheer vocal power.  

Richard Foreman’s own gravelly voice punctuates the action, opining on Madeline X and her predicament in his signature delighted, conspiratorial, phlegmy brio. With a resigned air, he drops pearls of wisdom that are taken up in repetitive verse by the singers and chanted, mantra-like. 

“Objects are beautiful,” we’re told, in another lie that is or is not actually a lie, but regardless of the script’s truth, the objects onstage are indeed beautiful. For one thing, there are the ducks. According to Gordon, these ducks — “giant,” “great,” and “ugly duckling,” among other varieties —  were at the core of what Foreman envisioned when he gave Gordon the text to be musically adapted. A lacquered, roasted duck in a mouthwatering chestnut hue is spun around on a silver platter. The chorus rides duck-shaped rocking horses like a child’s dream of cavalry. Still other ducks are used for target practice, though all of these fowl are nobody’s fool: their omnipresence lends them a great sense of psychic power over their human costars. 

E.B. Brooks’s playful costumes are adorned with and composed of bizarre and wonderful objects: a barrel worn like overalls, Great Depression-style, an inner-tube tutu, and Carmen Miranda headpieces laden with colored baubles that I only wish had been golf balls. There is a snake with the head of a man in a shaggy wig, a bejeweled miniature house, and several enormous polyhedral dice. Beautiful women in boas wield bows and arrows. Alt-rockstar St. Vincent makes a special guest appearance in feathered funereal blacks, crooning a lonely ballad of isolation – is she the “banished ugly duckling” Foreman warned us about? A golf motif emerges, combining with the ducks and tartan plaids to conjure an old, masculine world that threatens ugly banishments. 

Towards the conclusion of the piece, Foreman delivers a tongue-in-cheek summation of Madeline X’s priorities: “Madeline X still beautiful. Madeline X still OK for golf.” Tortured by the decisions and rituals involved with beauty and propriety, Madeline X is striving to live her life inside of the prescribed (and bejeweled) boxes laid before her. It seems, despite her best efforts, she will always stand out — or, like a duck in a fine restaurant, be eaten. 

 

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