Ray Pride

Katharina Otto-Bernstein's years-in-the-stalking standard-issue yet absorbing "Absolute Wilson" traces the "absolute ambition" of the peripatetic 65-year-old workaholic producer-designer-director and establishment avant-garde figure whose work gratifies and annoys viewers in equal measure. Much archival footage of Robert Wilson's older productions is gratifyingly on display, as well as a straightforward contextualization of Wilson's peers and collaborators. (As Philip Glass ["Einstein on the Beach"] points out, in the late 1970s, many of the figures of that era of New York City music and theater that have persisted might have been found in one small room at any given time as each other's audiences.) Closer to the work of a choreographer, Wilson's ambitious, idiosyncratic stage pictures are singular and open to a wide variety of interpretations (or annoyance, or indifference). The Texas-accented Wilson seems like a gifted raconteur and very level-headed man in interview; his hard-headed, sometimes fiery reputation is on display along with rivers of encomium. Wilson's stage pictures are another matter, making "Absolute Wilson" rise above the pedestrian. Interviewees include a snip of acerb from champion hater John Simon; Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Lichtenstein, collaborators Jessye Norman, Tom Waits, David Byrne and former New York Times arts critic and arch-supporter John Rockwell. 110m.

"Absolute Wilson" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2006-11-28)

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