Play Description

A kaleidoscopic, surrealistic overview of contemporary America, set forth in the bizarre, highly theatrical style which characterizes this writer's distinctive voice. Produced by New York's highly regarded Public Theater, the play employs brilliantly imaginative avante-garde techniques to highlight both the dreams — and delusions — which infuse and motivate our modern world. The play is made up of a series of concurrent actions, some set in a tacky motel, some elsewhere, involving a group of disparate but curiously related people. There is the young night clerk, Pauline, who studies her high-school English Lit notebook, while growing increasingly fearful of the unseen and unwanted suitor who lies in wait in the motel parking lot; a raucous carnival barker touting his giant crocodile, Bonecrusher; a pair of seedy bar denizens who occasionally break into song; a dim-witted handyman, Chuckles, who performs pointless errands; a deranged scientist who believes that he is in contact with creatures from outer space; an abandoned woman who waits restlessly for a lover who will probably never return; and a mysterious drifter, Faber, who, somehow becomes the catalyst which fuses all these divergent elements into a cohesive, and often wildly funny whole. And, in so doing, makes the play both an encapsulation of the American myth and, at the same time, a telling comment on what is right — and wrong — with this myth.

Production Info

Play Description

Set in the fantastical, miserable village of Brood, Glen Berger's ingenious play conjures up a marvelously imaginative world peopled by a large cast of dreamers, schemers and would-be lovers. Tormented by the memory of a beautiful young girl he adored and lost, and saddled with the child she left behind as a painful reminder of their doomed romance, a village tinker turned poet tries to ease his pain by conjuring up a hilarious and extremely moving tale, a story made up for the young boy as they sit in front of the dying embers of their hearth. When the last spark is extinguished, we have gone along with them on a magical journey filled with music, shadow, and light, meeting along the way a town full of comically misguided characters and an enchanting young saleswoman of casket bell devices for the prematurely buried. A rich and delightful fairy tale for everyone who remembers what a great story sounds like.

Production Info