Posted on Thu, Sep. 6, 2007
Four of a Kind: One Beckett, One Ionesco, a Pinter and a Durang. Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, specializing in Theatre of the Absurd, offers a chance to see four rarely performed little plays by four big playwrights. Each is interesting in its own way, but they are not "four of a kind" and treating them as if they were all similar compromises each.
The funniest is Durang's "For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls," a nifty parody of Glass Menagerie (with an occasional nod to A Streetcar Named Desire). But this comes as a jarring, if entertaining, third in a program of far less comical works.
These are all about language:
Beckett's "Come and Go," is a delicate, mysterious and very brief piece; three women murmur barely audibly, barely visible in half light; there are moving moments in this, but it's too loud and too bright to work.
Pinter's "Trouble in the Works" also suffers from too much volume and too little menace; this minor sketch about a worker's rebellion in a factory depends for its humor or ridiculously named mechanical products.
Ionesco's "Foursome" is full of vaudevillian mugging as the characters accuse each other: "You don't mean what you say" and "You don't say what you mean."
Tina Brock, who clearly loves this stuff, directs all four. - Toby Zinman
$10. 6 p.m. Sunday, 8 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday at L'Etage, 6th and Bainbridge Streets.
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