Venal Scene

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Goddam Pig Farm

(ADDENDUM: I got to see Pig Farm for free as part of a deal for bloggers. Just sos you know.)

Today is PIG FARM day here at the Scene. It should have been so earlier, but for the change of settings on my computer (see below). PIG FARM is playing at the Roundabout right now, although it's the most un-Roundabout show I've ever seen. It's parody at its best, with a sensibility that seems -- for lack of a more felicitous term -- too young for Roundabout. But perhaps that's where they're a-headed, to the goddam youth.

PIG FARM had the feel of a well-funded midnight show on old Ludlow Street, a send-up of the great American lyrical rural playwrights. Like Mel Brooks without the Borscht. All one expects from Shepherd or Steinbeck or Inge plays out on stage: the stoic American-Gothic characters, the flights of poetry repeated with Great Irony, the climactic acts of violence that Fertilize With Blood. Only it's all ridiculous. It's "a goddam pig farm." The flights of lyricism tangle up in logical knots. Without winking at the audience, the characters poke fun at the expectations of the genre, and invite us to laugh at it too. Character, plot, and most of all Insight Into the Nature of Life take a back seat. This is part of why the play caught my interest, and why -- I think -- it confused the regulars.

I sat in front of an older couple on my left. The older couple uttered not one chuckle. Through two acts, mind you. Why stay at a comedy that doesn't make you laugh? Because -- I suspect -- they were subscribers, and subscribers sit there and take it, because that's part of the deal: for a couple hundred simoleons, the theatre provides specific portions of culture, the same portions, year in, year out. Classic plays with big stars. New work by well-heeled playwrights of the U.K. But here, it was like the older couple ordered sausage-and-cheese biscuits, and the Roundabout gave them an accordion. And perhaps, as they tried to make breakfast of this accordion, they waited, in the vain hope, that at some point in their two hours traffic, the play would serve them their biscuit. To let go of what one expects of a piece of art, even with a piece as good-time Charlie as PIG FARM, seems to be a stunt that the Roundabout subscribership might not be willing to attempt. It's too bad, because this play belongs with great parodies like The Actors Nightmare and Young Frankenstein. I hope that Roundabout continues to pick accordions for their subscribers, and that Greg Kotis keeps making them.

Go see PIG FARM and have a good laugh. That's goddam enough.
Labels: theatre, thumbs up

posted by Dan 1:07 PM
|