If at this point you are thinking it might be helpful to know more about Swan’s marriage, forget it. When the pinkish eminence in a jeweled miter finally emerges from his gilded sarcophagus, 15 minutes into the 75-minute performance, he has little to say about his actual life. You will have to guess for yourself whether Bellamy or Bollany or a man named Fred Bates — seen in a portrait — were really his lovers or are just convenient composites. (Bates was real.)
That might not matter in a play about a successful artist, whose art can be trusted to speak for itself. But what we are shown of Swan’s work does not come close to clearing that bar. In what he calls his “most famous dance,” “To a Hero Slain,” he looks merely wooden and ridiculous, his maroon smock flapping, his comical sword flailing. (The evocative if merciless costumes are by An-lin Dauber.)
Because the play abjures psychology in favor of gesture, much as Swan apparently did in his choreopoems, nothing tells us whether he is in on the joke. It thus becomes difficult to know how to respond when he makes a fool of himself or when he offers “beauté sécrets” — laxatives and olive oil baths — that can turn anyone into “an Adonis like me.” To laugh or not to laugh? Both seem cruel.
No wonder his Carnegie audiences sniggered.
But if Mr. Torn’s performance is meant to discomfit us in the same way Swan’s performances discomfited them, I’m not sure the equivalence is a justification. After all, Swan could do no better. Surely Mr. Torn, a stalwart of the experimental theater, could — if the director, Steve Cosson, wanted him to. I doubt he does; not improving things is a trademark of the Civilians, which often uses verbatim interviews as the basis for its plays.
Instead, "Paul Swan Is Dead and Gone” tries to have it both ways. It enjoys making fun of Swan; Sontag, watching him perform “To a Hero Slain,” says that camp is good only when it’s awful, and “I don’t know if this is awful enough.”
At the same time, it uses Swan to express the serious anxiety of being left behind, as an artist, as a human. That theme, at least, is touching: If we live long enough, we’re all camp.
