Dina El-Aziz's costumes bridge the narrow gap between Bay Area rock band and fertility cult. Stacey Derosier's pulsating lights accent the music, which is perfectly balanced within the intimate McGinn/Cazale Theater (sound design by Joanna Lynne Staub). He would feel genuinely threatening if director Tamilla Woodard hadn't staged Weightless as a rock concert, keeping the characters mostly confined to the safety of their kit setups. Lila Blue plays Philomela in the Kilbanes' Weightless, directed by Tamilla Woodard, at WP Theater.Īll the musicians in the show are talented (Moses on keys, Dan Harris and Kofy Brown on percussion), but Pollock brings unimpeachable skill and a growly baritone to the role of a man who goes on to rape his sister-in-law and cut out her tongue. Playing the bass guitar as she sings, Kilbane puts the roc(k) in Procne, and her riff battles with Pollock are indeed the stuff of legend. Together, they're like an ancient precursor to Heart.

Slightly quirky and painfully sincere, Blue has real sororal chemistry with Kilbane, who seems both more worldly and more vulnerable. 'When you run away we go together,' Philomela says to her sister, her big doe eyes conveying hurt and confusion. She decides to go with him to his island, a brief holiday that inevitably leads to pregnancy and unbounded domesticity. That is, until Procne encounters Tereus (Josh Pollock) and becomes obsessed with his bow and arrow - just like Diana's. When Philomena is betrothed to 'some local halfwit' (Moses, being a good sport), they decide to run away and live in a shack on the beach. It's about sisters Procne (Kate Kilbane) and Philomela (Lila Blue), seemingly inseparable and always dreaming about the gods, especially the huntress Diana. It takes a gruesome story from Ovid's Metamorphoses and sets it to 75 minutes of irresistible music. And so it is with the Kilbanes (that's husband-and-wife duo Dan Moses and Kate Kilbane) in their new rock opera Weightless, which is now making its off-Broadway debut with WP Theater. If you want to repurpose ancient mythology into a feminist tale of empowerment, you're going to have to take a few artistic liberties.

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