What I liked
For people who like to know exactly what they’re going to see, this is a tricky play to sell – it doesn’t have an easily explainable plot – it’s most likely categorization is probably Theatre of the Absurd. Ultimately it’s an exploration of semantics, meaning, duality and the need for humans to feel meaningful. In an age of a ‘president’ who is incapable of finishing a sentence, uses the wrong words and muddles his epithets and mixes his metaphors, this is a clever commentary on the importance of words having specific meanings
Things definitely happen and there’s clearly a beginning and an end. But unlike less experimental pieces of theatre the actors have a challenging task because, for the most part, they don’t have clear emotional arcs to follow. Each character is a word in a sentence – and some words have a clearer motivation. “Why” probably has the clearest motivation – to question everything. “Road” has a clear meaning but a less obvious emotional motivation, dare I say ‘drive’?
So it’s nothing short of remarkable that the actors (a HUGE cast – I can’t begin to imagine the logistical nightmare that must have been!) managed to create very clear characters. Even more remarkable is that despite the large cast (15), every single actor was memorable – even the “?” and the “.” made an impression – the full stop/period making a last minute appearance must be commended on her patience and the question mark with her ability to influence everyone else to dance, was a great addition to the wordiness of the play.
In particular, I was impressed by Ted Femrite, playing the role of the Chicken; there wasn’t a moment that he wasn’t 100% engaged in being the chicken and managed to embody the essence of a chicken without descending into caricature. I never thought I’d ever say an actor played a chicken with nuance and subtlety, but he did!
A couple of the other performers really stood out but most commendable is the fact that they worked as a team. Some roles have a lot more to do than others so it’s incredible that even the smaller roles each had something that made them stand out.
What I didn't like
My only real criticism was the size of the cast on small stage meant that some of the blocking was awkward and I felt that some of the staging could have been more inventive when they were all on together. I think an opportunity was missed in terms of some visual wordplay by careful choreography of which words were standing next to each other to make statements, so if this is ever done again that might be something to include in the staging (e.g. ‘the other chicken’; ‘the road to chicken’; ‘the cross chicken’, ‘the side of the road to cross’, etc.)
My overall impression
I enjoyed this performance immensely. I love word play and intellectual banter and nuance and puns and innuendo and word play. As a result, I was thoroughly entertained. Well-written and uniquely unusual.
