Review: A play by Ivo Dimchev at La Mama

Marcus David
November 2023

photo by Marcus David

November 16 – 26, 2023

La Mama presents In Hell with Jesus/Top 40

Written, directed and choreography by the Bulgarian theater director, performance artist, activist, choreographer, singer-songwriter, and visual artist Ivo Dimchev.

If you like having your mind bent with a whirlwind approach that calls to mind Kafka with dildos and songs, then In Hell with Jesus/Top 40, the latest work by choreographer, visual artist, singer-songwriter, and activist, Ivo Dimchev is just for you and its a real doozy.

This reality piercing production at the La Mama Downstairs opens with Ivo Dimchev as a wild looking writer running auditions and controlling our reality as he works up beautiful musical numbers with the help of two auditioning actors and plenty of audience members, supposedly paid for their services with either a tote bag, a music book or simply cash.

Convincing, of course, but leaving me at times to wonder if I were the only true audience member in a vast conspiracy of actors. Otherwise, how is it possible that a sixty-two-year-old woman from the audience would volunteer to take off all her clothes and simulate sex on stage for the modest sum of 100 dollars. I began asking myself if the stranger sitting next to me could be trusted or was he too in cohoots with Ivo. Can I even trust my companion? With Ivo Dimchev, all seems possible.

The audience is encouraged to make plenty videos and photos of the entire production with their phones, and for this Ivo provides for us a wild and grotesque tableux of sex, smartphones, selfies and worship. All this is beautifully staged and wonderfully lit for the audience to document for their own purposes.

Be warned, almost all of this production is extremely hot and very sexy.  In Hell with Jesus/Top 40 offers up plenty of nudity and sexual situations, mixed with challenging and provocative questions for the audience to vote on, like for example, which would you prefer being in hell with Jesus or in heaven with Donald Trump. Provocation and the unsettling of the border between the stage and the audience is what this production delivers and delivers well, right up to the point where I found myself having to take a moment to reassert my own reality, by telling myself it’s only a play, it’s not real.

I recommend seeing In Hell with Jesus/Top 40 and experiencing it for yourself. The songwriting and performances are wonderful and exceptionally strong, and the show’s message to respect art really comes through and resonates, especially when shouted while smashing a dildo on to the stage.