Somewhere between the writing and the blankly anti-naturalist performance style here, a very peculiar, urban alienation is fetched up by writer-director Richard Maxwell, the emerging darling of the New York scene who earned a commendation at the Obie awards last year for this skilful piece, directed for the New York City Players.
The key to it is that the actors are completely lacking in affect, like mental couch potatoes. They stand languidly in front of the audience, arms hung by their sides, in a set which faithfully replicates a corner of their rehearsal room. They intone their lines fast and deadpan, then stare long at each other, as if in the forlorn hope of deciphering meaning from sedated bewilderment.
The ironic weirdness sends you guffawing in all directions, even at the accumulation of cruelties within a lumpily dressed American family who, as far as we can tell, live on a house on a street full of traffic.
A terminally indecisive Mom serves buttered toast, looking at Pop with a perpetual expression of blank concern. Pop regards her with a disinterest beyond disdain, only addressing his 10-year-old son, who apes his father's toast behaviour like a chess game. But the kid also stares unswervingly up at Pop, asking searching questions that are never answered directly, except with a soliloquoy of deranged fatherly authority (I have never seen a child actor as wise and disciplined as young Aaron Nutter).
Then there's Mike. Mike wears a loud suit, and stands well apart from the family. Eventually, he introduces himself in another derailed word-salad of thoughts, about an unspecified "operation" he set up in which "nobody would get hurt", except that his brother got killed. Now he's looking for revenge.
It's all very clever, the pared-back semiotics of the story-telling kicking off the wildest absurdism. The dialogue is littered with the staccato phrase-fragments of Mamet, with Maxwell's own well-aimed nonsense of perfectly normal crazies, with their paranoia of federal government.
Ends tonight. Box office: 00-353-1-679 6622.
