Casey Wimpee's new one-man play Bring Me the Head of John Ford is a clever and fascinating piece. It's reminiscent of Lanford Wilson's The Madness of Lady Bright or Adrienne
Kennedy's The Funnyhouse of a Negro
with its portrait of a person on the edge of insanity, but adding a multimedia
element in lieu of the other plays' imagined characters.
Josh Fid (played by Michael Mason), is a young man slowly
devolving in his apartment; watching westerns, taking Dexedrine, lying around turgid
in his underwear, and ignoring the phone.
He's watched the movie so many times that he can speak the lines in sync
or else riff on the characters' idiosyncrasies (delivering a hilarious "director's
commentary"), but somehow still thinks he'll be able to change the inevitable
ending. Meanwhile, his answering machine
messages fill in the blanks- trash is piling up outside his trailer, his father
has sent him a money order for his birthday, his copy of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is overdue…
Josh's deep self-loathing is slowly revealed as the play
goes on. Calling himself Oedipus (though
his father is clearly alive) he hits his hand with a hammer, and he wraps up a
gun as a birthday present for himself. The
movies soon leave Josh's television and are projected on the walls, where he
can interact with the images, using his remote control as his quick-draw
pistol. The visuals by Karl Newman are
excellently realized.
Although the 30-minute play is intriguing, and Mason's
performance is strange and riveting, it ultimately doesn't amount to all that much.
Bring Me the Head of
John Ford
at
The Brick Theater
Last performance: Sat, Jun 14th 1:30
30 min running time
575
Metropolitan Ave.,
Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
1/2 block from the Lorimer Stop of the L train
All tickets $12
Tickets available at the door or through theatremania.com
(212-352-3101 or toll free: 1-866-811-4111)
Photo uncredited: Michael Mason as Josh Fid.
