An actor (Nicholas Bruder) enters with an old radio and helps us pass the time by surfing through stations. Her crusty portrayal of Grandma, pitching about in the sandbox and grousing at the cellist's music, makes for the play's funniest moments.Ī nine-minute pause (for a set change) separates this play from the second, but in Signature's signature smart fashion, the interlude becomes its own little bit of theater. Phyllis Somerville, however, is the pearl in this oyster.
Hunky Ryan-James Hatanaka gives the Young Man a dim-witted gravitas as he flexes, flashes a bright smile, and raises and lowers his arms with ominous, winglike swoops in front of a sunny yellow background (scenic design by Mimi Lien). Alison Fraser plays Mommy with exquisite indifference to Grandma's fate, and Frank Wood's Daddy looks too browbeaten to care much about anything. The cast nails the humor and tone of this 15-minute absurdist nugget with uncanny precision. Sahr Ngaujah and Mikéah Ernest Jennings star in María Irene Fornés' Drowning, directed by Lila Neugebauer, at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Meanwhile, a cellist (Melody Giron) plays intrusive background music as Mommy and Daddy relax in lawn chairs waiting for Grandma to kick the bucket - or in this case, a literal toy sand pail. They plunk her in a sandbox to thrash about while a hunky Young Man (aka the Angel of Death) exercises nearby. Middle-aged couple Mommy and Daddy visit a beach intending to dispose of 86-year-old Grandma. The Sandbox, one of Albee's first one-act masterpieces, kicks things off with a disconcerting though undeniably playful look at the way the young discard the old. With the impeccable performances of her cast, she combines the diverse tones, techniques, and themes of Edward Albee's The Sandbox, María Irene Fornés' Drowning, and Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro into two humorous and frightening hours of theater, now running at the Pershing Square Signature Center. In each work, Lila Neugebauer's direction is nothing short of extraordinary. Signature Theatre Company has assembled a trio of brilliant plays by three former playwrights in residence that show how shallow notions of age, beauty, and race devalue individuals.
Absurdist theater, with its quirky characters and fantastical situations, is an ideal genre for exploring the insidious ways society ranks us and often makes us feel negatively about ourselves and our bodies.
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