Mike Daisey gets his mojo back with "F***ing F***ing F***ing Ayn Rand"

Ignore the "This American Life" stigma. The second of Daisey's two-part Seattle return holds powerful political punch.
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The one and only Mike Daisey

Ignore the "This American Life" stigma. The second of Daisey's two-part Seattle return holds powerful political punch.

It's hard to believe that the two monologues comedian Mike Daisey is performing in Seattle this month are written by the same guy. Last week’s "American Utopias" featured a potty-mouthed Daisey opining on the corporatization of Disney World, the bizarre nature of the Burning Man festival and the occupation and secretive closure of New York’s Zuccotti Park. That two-and-a-half hour show (no intermission) featured a profusely sweating Daisey in a nonstop assault of f-bombs, as he provided colorful but predictable personal reactions to the scenes he’d chosen to describe.

This week’s show, "F***ing F***ing F***ing Ayn Rand," is another animal altogether. It is Daisey at his dramatic best, quietly spinning tales about Rand’s life and his own experience reading her work. This coherent, moving narrative is devoid of "American Utopias’" excessive expletives and ends in a powerful call to action for those appalled at the power Rand’s political philosophy continues to exert on America’s right wing and, consequently, our nation as a whole.

Although it would be hard to argue with Daisey’s assessments in "American Utopias," it seemed superficial and unfocused compared to the tight performances, epitomized by "Ayn Rand," at which Daisey has become so expert.

In "Ayn Rand" and the previous monologues Daisey has presented in Seattle — including the controversial but masterful "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" — this brilliant storyteller sprinkles truly profound insights about the human condition into compelling stories of his personal experiences. And each of those monologues contains a single idea at its core, a basic message — sometimes political — that Daisey wants to leave the audience with.

Not so with "American Utopias," which is difficult to boil down to a coherent message or idea. In Daisey’s own words — uttered in the courtyard outside Seattle Rep where the performance concludes — "American Utopias" is fundamentally a show about him, not us. It’s an honest admission, but one that leaves the audience out of the equation. That's troublesome in performing art, an experience in which the audience is an essential part of the artistic expression.

"Ayn Rand," on the other hand, engages the audience from Daisey’s first words, as he raises the question of why we should talk about Ayn Rand in the first place. He doesn’t provide his own answer until the very end, but he gets us thinking about what has inspired us to attend the performance and what we hope to learn over the course of the evening. Where "American Utopias" feels like Daisey is talking — shouting really — at us, in "Ayn Rand" he engages us in conversation, occasionally addressing us directly with a physical gesture or a “you know what I’m talking about.”

In left-leaning Seattle, Daisey’s musings on Rand’s right-wing political philosophy and literary weaknesses are likely to strike a familiar chord. The emotional connection between performer and audience is easy to establish. But Daisey doesn’t rely on that connection alone to communicate with us. He spins a riveting tale about his experiences with Rand’s books and, in the process, reminds us of our own discovery of her work.

The show may be his most personal monologue — a revelation at the very end is shocking in what it unveils about Daisey’s character, especially given his success.

In one of his most touching and profound insights, Daisey reminds us that what we remember of a book we’ve read many years before is not so much the content of the book, but the setting in which we read it. His description of reading "The Fountainhead" in the back seat of his father’s car focuses on the circumstances and the physical environment of that experience, not on the content of the book. Likewise, his retelling of the heated classroom discussions his high school class had about the book detail the form of those discussions — students almost coming to blows over disagreements — rather than the nature of their arguments.

One could argue that "Ayn Rand" is the most important of Daisey’s monologues. It has the potential to inspire us to think deeply about why Rand holds such sway over the American right and what the left can do about it. At this moment in our nation’s history, Daisey argues that it’s an issue we cannot avoid addressing.

Though he doesn't provide the final answer to this question, he does offer a road map for finding the answer and urges us to undertake the journey.

By throwing down the gauntlet in a humane, gentle way, Daisey enables us to walk out of the theater in a thoughtful frame of mind. Without sacrificing any entertainment value, "Ayn Rand" makes us conscious of the role we play in shaping our country's future and thankful for Daisey’s talent for creating theater, which is both emotionally moving and politically relevant.

If you go: "F***ing F***ing F***ing Ayn Rand" by Mike Daisey through May 11. Leo K. Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre 155 Mercer St., Seattle; Tickets $25 at 206-443-2222 or www.seattlerep.org.


 

  

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