And that was the problem with Peter Pucci's new "To Begin Again," an hourlong solo he performed on Friday night at the Joyce Theater, part of the Altogether Different series.

The idea was interesting and the staging seamless and vivid. Mr. Pucci peeled off his clothes at the start, then put on new ones for costumes, chosen from a rack at the side of the stage, for each of 10 episodes.

Each episode was set to a Chopin nocturne arranged and performed by onstage musicians who occasionally interacted with Mr. Pucci. Stagehands also brought elements of the set on and off from time to time.

There was a vacuum, however, at the center of a piece that Mr. Pucci has described as semiautobiographical. His character was strangely generic: pathetic clown at one point, a sharp jazz hustler at another, a hopeful young ballplayer and finally a man prepared to die, somewhat truculently, dressed in nothing but his big battered boots.

A few gestures stood out, among them the rocking of a baby and the scrabbling of an imprisoned man. But there was little sense of who this man was and what his life had been.

Among the musicians were Sloan Wainwright (voice), Nana Simopoulos (bouzouki), Beata Moon (piano and Wurlitzer), Brent Michael Davids (American Indian flute) and Michael Wolff (piano). Howell Binkley designed the lighting. The costumes were by Kaye Voyce.

The piece is to be performed again on Friday night and Saturday afternoon at the Joyce Theater (175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea).

Source: NY Times