Bored of the Ring?

Wagner´s Der Ring des Nibelungen—that’s The Ring Cycle to you—is a sprawling mess of love, betrayal, heartbreak, incest, lust for power and now, thanks to a new production of this massive drama, professional wrestling.

As presented by local indie theater zealots The Bushwick Starr/Performance Lab 115, Wagner’s opus is one peppered with caricatures of 1980s Saturday morning wrestling stars, most notably Randy “Macho Man” Savage standing in for the putative hero Wotan, and who has infected the rest of the dramatis personae (including Road Warriors Hawk and Animal and, naturally, Savage’s ingénue Miss Elizabeth) with his gravelvoiced histrionics (non-wrestling fans may remember him from his Slim Jim commercials). Not a bad conceit, because what is wrestling, after all, except a soap opera for straight men?

And, it must be noted, it takes golden apples the size of Vince McMahon’s balls to stage a production of The Ring (actually just parts I and II, but trust me, that is plenty) in the outer-reaches of gentrified Brooklyn while the Met is cranking up its own version with the scope, budget and hydraulics of the last five U2 tours.

The Bushwick Starr’s version of The Ring enjoys no such special effects; in fact, there isn’t even any singing. The ridiculous plot—revolving around a magic ring, a dwarf, domestic abuse, etc.—is reduced to a straight-up talkie, fueled by lots of ’80s hard rock (plus the best use of the Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” ever in an Off-Off Broadway play) and, as previously cited, the marvels of professional wrestling.

Therein lies the one fault with this very likeable show. While the acting and staging are about what you would expect from an indie theater company (with a few stand-outs, including Jeff Clarke as the Macho Man Wotan, Marty Keiser as the Nibelung Dwarf Alberich and Sara Buffamanti in the triple role of Cranky Cathy the TV announcer, Rhinemaiden Flosshilde and a particularly pouty Brünnhilde), the actual grappling could use a little more zork. And by “zork” I mean some harder hits, “bumps” as we call them in the business.

What gets lost in the otherwise admirable crossover from high opera to gutter grappling is the oomph of the mat game—elbow smashes, pile drivers, eyegouges and head slaps that look like they inflict actual pain. A chair shot to the skull would have been nice. Anything that would have put the wrestling angle over on the audience, one good “holy shit” moment where one of the actors takes a real bump to galvanize the audience and move the whole shmear beyond the suspension of play-acting disbelief. Yes, it’s a risky business, but therein lies the beauty of wrestling. Like love, it hurts like hell. To that end, the highlight of the wrestling shtick, ironically (and not a word I toss around lightly), is the love scene between Siegmund and Siegelinda, which plays like the Kama Sutra meets the Camel Clutch, and gets high kudos for creativity.

But then, this is wrestling for nonfanatics, ditto, opera sans the opera for punters who don’t need four hours of chromatic Wagnerian caterwauling to feel like they got their dose of culture for the year. It’s a tough trick to turn, selling tragedy as kitsch, but the heroes of The Bushwick Starr manage it nicely. When Wotan strips Brünnhilde of her powers, telling her that “you are no longer a goddess, you will age and you will die,” I wept openly. It is the worst thing you can say to professional wrestler. And it stung.

>> The Ring Cycle Part 1 & 2 Through Oct. 30, The Bushwick Starr, 207 Starr St. (betw. Wyckoff & Irving Aves.), Brooklyn, www.bushwickstarr.org; 8, $15.