“Pig Farm,” at 1st Stage, is a zany comedy that tackles farming, independence, improbability, alliteration, sex and the long arm of the government.
Set in the present, in the kitchen of a pig farm near the Potomac, the play begins with farmer Tom (Tucker Sparkman) urging his young farmhand, Tim (Charley Mann), to start counting snouts, because a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency is on the way to do an inspection.
Tom is angry because of the government’s intrusion into the lives of common folks. Then Tina (Belen Pifel) enters. She’s obsessed with having a baby, but Tom has no time for domestic thoughts: He’s concerned only that the feds will find out he’s been dumping fecal waste.
After lovelorn Tina and goofy, drunken Tim spend the night together, the representative of the EPA finally arrives in the person of Teddy (the excellent Lucas Beck), and he too falls for Tina.
All four characters intensely want what they want, and they don’t want to wait to get it. Like pigs groveling after slops, they constantly collide, elbowing each other out of the way. Author Greg Kotis clearly means to parody government regulation; Beck plays the EPA man like a humorless Joe Friday, speaking of the government in reverential tones. But Kotis’ criticism also extends to hapless Tim, deluded Tom and reckless Tina.
Director Mark Krikstan’s set is a marvelously detailed kitchen, complete with muddy boots and overalls, above which hangs the huge image of a pig with pink ears and snout. Peter Van Valkenburgh’s sound design precisely reproduces not only thousands of snuffling pigs, but also a rooster, a truck crash, a shoot-out and a pig stampede.
Krikstan wisely emphasizes the frenzied humor in this script. In Act 1, he winds up the action to a fever pitch, and with dizzying speed the second act lurches to an appropriately loony end. Krikstan manages to create a semi-realistic place mired in mud and human desire, but his talented ensemble also makes it clear that this farm inhabits a parallel, irrational universe where anarchy reigns supreme.
If you go
‘Pig Farm’
Where: 1st Stage, 1524 Springhill Road, Tysons Corner, McLean
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 6 p.m. Sunday; through March 8
Info: 703-854-1856; 1ststagespringhill.org
