Wildly uneven
The Last One Left
Written by Jason Pizzarello
Directed by Dev Bondarin
Produced by Geek Ink (www.thelastoneleft.com)
Midtown International Theatre Festival (www.midtownfestival.org for
showtimes)
WorkShop Jewel Box Theater,
Non-union production (through
Reviewed by Sean Michael O’Donnell
Jason Pizzarello is a talented playwright. Several years ago his play Saving the Greeks: One Tragedy at a Time - a laugh-out-loud, genuinely funny, spoof-tacular send-up of all things Greek tragedy – received an outstanding production at the 14th Street Y Theater. Witty, intelligent and unabashedly silly, Pizzarello’s Saving the Greeks took parody to a new level. Unfortunately his latest offering, The Last One Left, fails to live up to the promise of his earlier work, making for a disappointing and wildly uneven entry into this year’s Midtown International Theatre Festival.
The nonsensical plot is a jumble of comedy, drama and social commentary. The play begins as a wacky Shakespearean-inspired comedy (one of the lesser ones with dual roles and mistaken identities) and then transitions into a serio-comic social satire with not-so subtle allusions to the Iraq War and immigration before ultimately devolving into a tired family drama about loyalty and obligation.
The story concerns itself with a severely dysfunctional
family – Mother Ruth was hit in the head by a falling airplane part rendering
her equal parts stupid and crazy; daughter Emma grapples with insecurity and
dreams of a future in New York City; younger sister Anna announces her
intentions to become a vegetarian lesbian and attend college far away from
home; and creepy Uncle Richard, when not enslaving his parents in the basement,
appears intermittently to make proclamations of profound inanity. The play opens on the family preparing for
their beloved son/brother/nephew Danny’s homecoming. Danny has been gone for many years, fighting
in the
Pizzarello’s story is a schizophrenic mess of half-ideas with no clear connections or resolutions. Jokes land with a thud (Mexican robots? Falling airplane debris?) and are quickly abandoned as attempts at social satire come off superficial and obvious. Dev Bondarin’s resourceful staging helps to bridge some of the gaps in Pizzarello’s weak script, but she fails the actors when it comes to telling a cohesive story or drawing clear characterizations. The actors are competent (particularly Emily Clare Zempel as Emma and Maria McConville as Anna), if misguided, failing to relate to their characters or each other. Ultimately, the stage is a mess of ill-defined characters, sloppy segues and senseless contrivances where very little happens and even less makes sense.
Writing: 0
Directing: 1
Acting: 1
Sets: 0
Costumes: 1
Lighting/Sound: 0
Copyright 2007 Sean Michael O’Donnell
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