An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show
August 3, 2010Henry Baum 1 Comment »Discovered another iteration of “American Book of the Dead – a play called “An American Book of the Dead – The Game Show.” Interestingly, the cover looks similar:
Plucked from the audience, three contestants live and die their way through a myriad of American incarnations as they compete for the ultimate prize, perfect enlightenment. The entire history of United States becomes their playing field, from Jamestown to the World Trade Center attack and beyond, as they struggle towards their individual goals. In between lives, the contestants visit the bardo realms, wacky worlds between death and rebirth where Stonewall Jackson and Harriet Tubman are husband and wife; where patriot poet Walt Whitman eternally argues with World War II’s traitor laureate, Ezra Pound. Even when things seem like they couldn’t get weirder, they do, as the contestants start to reincarnate as each other and the understanding begins to dawn that enlightenment is now here and nowhere; a trillion light-years and just a blink away.
Reviews of ABOD-TGS were about as mixed as a bottle of Italian salad dressing that’s been sitting for a month. On one hand, the LA Weekly raved, calling it: …a dazzling intellectual vaudeville, written with wit and dash, and executed with verve”; and Entertainment Today dubbed it, “… another world-class collision of combustible talent…. no one but Paul Mullin and Circle X could possibly take you on any better ride.”
On the other hand, The Los Angeles Times and Variety both panned the play mercilessly, claiming, respectively, that it “jumbles icons and ideas” and was, “…inexplicable and mind-numbing”. Often the wisest course of action when notices are this polar is to just go see the show and make your own choice. Anything that can make reviewers simultaneously that effusive and nasty has to be worth at least an evening and the cut-rate ticket price spent.
Still:
August 7th, 2010 at 11:32 am
[...] I’m posting different versions of The American Book of the [...]