Edie Agonistes
David J. of Bauhaus sets Warhol superstar’s sad life to music
By Ron Garmon
The ’60s are now like the vast and partially-looted tomb of a dead deity. The major idols – Dylan, Lennon, Ali – having long since been hauled away, the lesser iconography now fall to crowbar and cart. The short, vacant life of Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick was the subject of the recent, much-reviled film Factory Girl, the script of which no less than Lou Reed termed the work of “whores” and “illiterate retards.” Lou, whose song “Femme Fatale” is gorgeous tribute to this ephemeral beauty, summed up much of the movie’s critical reception.
The fabled socialite knew agonies far worse than any imaginable by hard-sweating WGA proletariat. Suffering from an outsized fortune, dazzling good looks, and a spooky-rich Old American bloodline, Sedgwick first attracted notice on the arm of the equally spectral Warhol, who starred her in many of his static wallpaper-art films that exploited the girl’s absent drone and old-money cachet as much as her pallid loveliness. Edie’s numb charisma spread far outside the art ghetto, and she was briefly celebrated as a great American fleur de mal before a drug overdose took her life in 1971 at age 28.
Attempts to reconcile Edie’s breathtaking face with the medicated pain of her voice began with her semi-biographical last movie, Ciao! Manhattan and continue today in the multimedia capers now running at the Met Theater under the title Silver for Gold. David J., between recording a Bauhaus reunion album and prepping for a Love and Rockets reunion show at Coachella later this summer, spent much of the last few years tinkering with script and score for this unusual presentation. The result is part post-punk operetta, part soap-opera wallow that takes its title from Sedgwick’s habit of spray-painting her blonde hair silver to match Warhol’s.
Familiar sugary airs from Bizet’s Carmen lulled an elegantly turned-out pre-curtain audience on opening night last Thursday, March 6. There was a single set consisting of a sofa, an ashtray, and a small table, but the theater’s walls looked barely enough to contain Monique Jenkinson’s feline dynamism as Edie. Stretching, lunging, and yowling in a dead-on replica of the scene-baby’s affectless yap, she dominates script and multimedia bric-a-brac, even giving the score a run for its money. Her performance is the only thing imposing unity on the piece’s jigsaw structure. Edie’s rambling monologues (composed and delivered with greater pungency than the historical Edie was accustomed) are punctuated with long musical interludes by David J. and backup and behind-the-scrim rants conducted in broad transatlantic accents by a horse-headed fellow in a wheelchair. Yes.
This startling character is Nohric, a “wounded healer” chorus commenting on Edie’s woes, with the heiress herself re-imagined by J. as Persephone, and her meaningless trawl through fame represented as the latter’s travails in the Underworld. Orpheus and Fabergé eggs were invoked, as readers of Bulfinch joined with smellers of bullshit for a few sidelong glances in the audience. The tunes were strong, as expected, with J.’s immemorial knack for angular melodies and off-kilter sentiments finding a few suitable pegs in this familiar tragedy of a Poor Little Rich Girl. By the time the ravaged, ravishing Ms. Jenkinson climbed into the lap of the otherly-abled equine and rolled away forever, I was happy for the sympathy of even a bad metaphor.
The guy with the boombox I passed later that night was thickset and smiled evilly at me over a dirty goatee as he staked out his chunk of downtown pavement. Stubby fingers fished inside his rags, produced a worn cassette, jammed it into the fat black machine and stabbed play. Out roared Alice Cooper’s forgotten gigolo anthem “Wish I Were Born in Beverly Hills.” It sounded like one final caviar prayer before champagne dreamland.
David J.’s Silver for Gold runs through Sunday at the Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave.,, Hollywood. Call (323) 957-1152 for information.
Published: 03/12/2008
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