goestoshow

If ever there was a story that could demonstrate that humor at its core is about bad things happening to people, this is the one. Played in a completely different way, this would easily be one of the most depressing fringe plays I’ve ever seen. Somehow, they manage to pull it away from the ledge (heh) by filling it up with somewhat geeky humor (the whole play is tetris themed, for example, complete with the famous GameBoy tetris song) and a supporting cast of extremely caricatured people.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable about making light of mental illness and the damage that can be inflicted by 9-5 drudgery on those who are mentally ill.

I had slightly higher hopes for this play given it’s written and directed by the team who did The Overnight last year, which was one of my absolute favorites of that year. I didn’t find this one nearly so creative or innovative.

Quite the opposite from The Overnight, where they maximized the use of 2 actors incredibly well, I felt this play really needed a fourth player to improve the interactions between the main three and the occasional fourth. The switching was never quite so obvious as it should have been, and always involved a main character leaving the stage when I wanted to have their take in it as well.

Just saw the overnight and am now waiting to see Liink and Zellda. I love the whole ‘before the show’ thing some plays do. The overnight had the main guy in the play just sitting sleeping at his radio board while everyone got seated and the play started when he wakes up. This one has the original Zelda overworld theme going.

Anyways, the Overnight was really good. They did an amazing thing with the secondary characters being behind a screen as silhouettes so they didn’t have to do rapid fire costume changes, and it worked really well. Especially when the crazy stalker lady was on the phone and she played the seductress. The main plot is a guy juggling his career ambitions with a relationship, which is pretty typical plot fodder for fringe plays. It excelled at doing it all in an interesting way, though. This is one of the two plays I’d be willing to see again so far.