The fear-monger of the title, never seen in the hourlong dance, is quickly revealed by a maidservant trembling into the microphone that's a stand-in for her oppressor. "Yes, Mrs. Margaret? Of course, Mrs. Margaret. ... It will never happen again." The servants, albeit under extreme duress, aim to please.
So does the dance. Running on alternating currents of slapstick and mechanistic solemnity, the work is a dizzy mash-up of camp and affliction. If Marshall is telling a tale of power and survival, he won't do it with a straight face. A chattel scene of a half-naked maid being auctioned off, her various body parts inspected and assigned a dollar value, might be more affecting if it hadn't been preceded by skits plucked from the vaudeville stage: a slap-off of warring servants; too-big disembodied heads swaddled like babies peering from a nursemaid's lap; men playing dress-up with their combined limbs to conjure the image of their headless, groping-hands mistress.
It's a circus. No wonder the audience titters when a maid is laid out in a funeral shroud.
The dancers, to be fair, are able physical comedians, whether unleashing a symphony of spit or tripping over one another to accommodate their mistress' endless demands. And the choreography, a mix of hip-hop, folkloric and modern movement, is demanding. Swaying in obeisance, popping and locking in saucy defiance, skittering in lockstep, the dancers embody Marshall's unison phrasing to magnify their characters' interchangeability, their absence of personal agency.
"Monger" flirts with heavy themes: imperialism in the character of Mrs. Margaret; the fantasy of emancipation when her underlings renounce her as the "Whore of Babylon;" the disenfranchised donning the mantle of their oppressor as the servants turn on one another. But these scenes pull up short, undone partly, though hilariously, by a giddy sound collage that includes vintage radio ads touting Hebrew National meats and gefilte fish in a jar.
White Bird's seasons have been studded with exceptional Israeli companies: Batsheva Dance Company (where Marshall was the first resident choreographer), Inbal Pinto's Tel Aviv-based troupe, the recent Yossi Berg/Oded Graf ensemble.
Marshall clearly shares their taste for rhythmic ritual, rich theatricality and absurdist humor. "Monger," heavy on the laughs and short on nuance though it is, cements his company as one to watch in Israel's growing roster of powerhouse physical theater ensembles.