Monday, December 15, 2025

Natalie Palamides in "Weer" at the Cherry Lane Theater

This is not a review. Why not? Because it's fast and furious.
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Last night I saw Weer at The Cherry Lane Theater in New York City. Natalie Palamides plays both the woman and the man in this comedy, each half of her body representing a gender.
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The word that came spontaneously to my mind after experiencing this show was propitiation. This according to the dictionary is the act of satisfying God's wrath against sin through a sacrifice. I was puzzled myself, and here's how I understand it.
I had definitely witnessed a sacrifice on stage, just as I might have seen one 2500 years ago on a Peloponasian stage. What was sacrificed? That was fairly easy to answer: comfort, modesty, ego, elegance, feminine dignity, masculine dignity, all these things that constrain my life (OK, not so much the masculine dignity) on a daily basis, and clearly that of the other people in the audience.
Palamides sacrificed all these for our benefit, with generosity and courage, and an astounding energy. She repeatedly doused herself in what must have been cold water on a freezing winter night, she banged her head on the floor, she whined, she strutted, she stripped, she touched her breasts, she faked sex and orgasm.
Weer is a deformation of the word deer. Her lover has a speech impediment he tries to hide. All these attributes she trampled on for our sake might come in the way of the true expression of love, as a kind of speech impediment. In the end he is able to stutter: I wove you, I wove you.
Yes, the story is that of a romcom: girl meet boy, there are lies, there is seduction, there is deception, and a man who will not commit enough emotionally to his partner to tell her he loves her. Every aspect is taken to extremes as in a greek tragedy where Medea will kill her own children to exact vengeance on the man who has betrayed her. It's a romtrajcom. Some of her speech is improvised as she interacts with the audience which she involves in the performance. There are not safety nets here when she walks the tight rope.
She wrote, directed and acts in the show, with an astounding richness of imagination. The scene where she hits a deer with her car is just about one of the funniest, most imaginative scene I have ever seen in the theater.
Palamides is a Greek name, and her performance is truly Herculean. Greeks were big on sacrificial rituals. Propiation is a concept both in Judaism and Christianism - whichever religion Palamides grew in. But what God did she need to propitiate? Maybe the god of norms and of TV shows and of social media where one shows one's best side and one's successes and best looking photos and sexy photos and enviable vacations and glamorous parties and tender love.
We left exhilarated and liberated after the show. May we carry a bit of that freedom for which Palamides sacrificed herself on stage into our daily life.
As the audience stood up for a well deserved ovation, she stayed just for a few minutes before disappearing backstage where I would imagine she collapsed, completely drained from her mental/physical/emotional blood (there was a lot of raspberry colored blood throughout the performance). She does this 6 times a week. (Clearly) not written with AI by Arabella Hutter von Arx
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