Playwright: John Guare
At: Shattered Globe Theatre at Victory Gardens, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 871-3000; $26-$35
Runs through: March 5
'You know your trouble? You got no sense of history!' snaps Bunny Flingus on the morning of Oct. 4, 1965. Today, Pope Paul VI is to visit New York and address the United Nations in condemnation of the Viet Nam war—an event portending miracles for a population unnerved by domestic inertia: the aforementioned Bunny, a worldly-wise bimbo willing to sleep, but not to cook, for her boyfriend until after the wedding. Her swain, Artie Shaughnessy, a middle-aged zookeeper who aspires to be a songwriter. His wife, called only 'Bananas,' is roaming their apartment in a drug-sedated haze. Add to this volatile mix an angry draftee gone AWOL, a grieving Hollywood producer, a starlet with a hidden disability and three nuns dazzled by the big city and you have a world where ANYTHING could happen.
And in the play that made a star of John Guare ( history, remember? ) , it does—sometimes happily, and sometimes not. What hasn't changed since its premiere in 1966—a period, you may recall, characterized by the aesthetic of sensory-overload—is the problem of keeping the screwball action from dissolving into the same frenetic chaos it
depicts. Fortunately, this Shattered Globe production has at its helm Ann Filmer, a director with the logistical focus of an air-traffic controller. On a classroom-sized stage further cluttered by console television sets, 16-foot telephone cords and a serengeti of stuffed animals, her agile-footed actors never waver in their polarity, but keep the confusion always firmly rooted in character and the dizzy logic of their universe to retain their grip on us right up to Guare's unexpectedly dark ending.
At the center of the mayhem is Doug McDade ( an actor who has TWICE acquitted himself admirably at the piano onstage, despite no musical training or electronic assistance ) as the desperate Artie. He is flanked by Eileen Niccolai, whose Bunny hits the stage at a sprint that sets the pace for all that follows, and Linda Reiter, rejecting crazy-lady shtick to keep the wistful Bananas well short of caricature. The other cast members deliver likewise commendable performances, but look for Heather Graff's Little Nun to steal every one of her scenes.