THE STORY: Ed, a carpenter turned playwright, has had his would-be masterpiece savaged by his brother, Ian, a drama critic who (upon losing his job) decides he is a vampire—sinking his fangs into his wife’s neck and then sending out to the butcher shop for a fresh supply of blood. Ian’s decision to “hate everything” does not, however, spare him the wrath of his disgruntled brother, who demands that he recoup the damage from his theatre review by restaging the play for an invited VIP audience. Ed and his wife are also searching for their precocious thirteen-year-old junkie daughter, a quest which Ian’s wife abets by sending her favorite guru off to look for her. When the missing Zivia turns up she has apparently acquired supernatural powers (and married the guru) all of which leads ingeniously to the hilarious (if cautionary) final scene in which, as Eileen Blumenthal puts it, “one is left with a vision of traditional America, decadent and stupid, taken over by a new order that is brainless, fanatical, and barbarian."
A biting, wildly funny black comedy by one of our theatre’s most brilliantly creative playwrights. The play uses antic flights of fancy and absurdist humor to explore the dark underside of America’s apparent well-being.
“As he’s demonstrated in the past, Mr. Kondoleon is a promising young writer with a tart tongue and off-the-wall sensibility.” —The New York Times.
“…a terrific sense of how to keep an audience entertained from moment to moment…a fierce, even apocalyptic vision.” —Village Voice.
“Kondoleon is a fast hand with absurd humor, particularly the telling quip that reveals personality.” —New York Daily News.
“THE VAMPIRES with its off-beat humor and world of its own indicates a writer of special gifts.” —BackStage.
