If your idea of entertaining theater is “Oklahoma!” or any production that involves the players serving you drinks at intermission, walk past Single Carrot Theatre, now about 10 yards east of its previous location on North Avenue. Single Carrot delves the theater of the mind, challenging audiences to think.
Consider its latest production, Adam Szymkowicz’s “Food for Fish.” The play opens with Bobbie (Elliott Rauh), a young, tortured artist (handsome, has a hole in his T-shirt, and uses a typewriter … constantly) writing “The Story of the Boy.” What appears on his page appears on stage, as Bobbie even takes a moment to physically arrange his characters into assorted positions.
The characters in question are three sisters: agoraphobic Barbara (Aldo Pantoja), serial dater and geneticist Alice (Karen Landry) and aspiring journalist Sylvia (Jessica Garrett). Oh, and there’s a coffin on stage as well, as this odd trio can’t get themselves to bury their decomposing gravedigger father.
As Genevieve de Mahy observes in her Director’s Note, the issue of gender roles — What does it mean to be a man or woman? — are at the heart of the play, and Mahy knocks this notion home by casting women in men’s roles and vice versa. Barbara and her husband, Dexter (Eileen del Valle) literally ask themselves these questions. Barbara can’t understand her constant fears, while Dexter is overcome with unexplained surges of violent feelings (but like a typical male, he doesn’t want to talk about them).
The play has a heavy absurdist bent. Alice, who is trying to isolate the “romance gene,” draws blood and takes urine samples from her dates, who are more than happy to oblige as they swoon over her, despite the fact with her granny glasses and pulled-back hair, is more plain Jane than femme fatale. Bobbie is a kissing bandit, bussing unsuspecting women (and the occasional man) on the streets of New York at 3 a.m., complete with spotlight, music and Eurkea moments for those kissed. He argues with his characters and relieves his writer’s block by staring down the barrel of a loaded .45. And then there’s the sisters’ obsession with New Jersey.
Ultimately, Bobbie’s novel and the sisters’ father find a home at the bottom of the Hudson River, where they become … well, you know. But what does all this mean? Is this a play about how well does anyone really know their true self? What keeps us from murdering our insane bosses or pushing a stranger in front of a train, as Dexter contemplates? Is it a play about loss, the painful transitions that occur as we grow from boy to man to husband, from girl to woman to wife, or the pain of never growing up at all? Perhaps all of the above.
If you go
“Food for Fish”
Single Carrot Theater
120 W. North Avenue,
Thursday to Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Tickets $10-$12.
For tickets, call 443-844-9253 or visit www.singlecarrot.com
