You can run, but you cannot hide from Cute Overload.

posted: 1:28:26 PM  

Frank McGuinness's play, recently closed at Everyman, is a study of three men held hostage by unseen captors in a city in the Middle East. They are chained to the walls of a prison cell improvised from an abandoned bath house. Though specified, the city (Beirut) matters not; their nationalities (Irish, American, and English) matter not. The play is about what a man will do to save his sanity, to keep his soul intact, when confronted by the blind violence of fate. Ostensibly a drama, the play owes as much to the comic role-playing antics of Lum and Abner, Bill and Ted, and Vladmir and Estragon—because as Edward, Adam, and Michael learn, the best tactic for dealing with this impossible, desperate situation is to laugh.

Aubrey Deeker is electric in the role of Edward, the Irishman. He is bawdy, hyperkinetic, using every physical means at his disposal. He is set off well by Jefferson A. Russell as Adam, the stolid, athletic American who is barely keeping himself together, and Richard Pilcher as Michael, the fastidious Englishman.

Production elements, under the helm of director Juanita Rockwell, are strong. Colin K. Bills's lights brown out at unexpected moments, the representation of a planned or unplanned power cut by the jailers. Milagros Ponce de León's set features two puddles of water at a low spot in the cracked tile floor (the water is replenished by a technician at intermission). The weighty chains that bind the men function nearly as a fourth character, as they resound loudly against a hollow built-up section of the set. Rockwell and her cast know how to find comedy in a look, in the subtle art of timing a take or a word. A fearsome, effective production.

posted: 1:14:46 PM  

11D helps me understand why recent offerings from George Lucas have left me cold:

posted: 12:36:57 PM