THE STORY: Set in a bright, starkly bare apartment, the action centers on a young couple, Bruno and Audrey, who are planning to marry now that Audrey is pregnant. In order to pay the rent Bruno has invited Audrey’s mother, Ingrid (whom Audrey detests), to move in with them, but he is not prepared for the unexpected arrival of his lifelong friend Nissim who, upon learning of the expected birth, announces that he will also stay on. He, like the others, looks to the baby for redemption from the disappointments and emptiness of his own life—and the hope, at last, of pure and ennobling love. It is in the barbed and very funny exchanges of these four unlikely roommates that the more serious concerns of the play are shadowed, culminating, after Audrey has departed for the hospital, in a bizarre but genuinely moving scene in which the wonder and promise of the Nativity are strikingly invoked.
A strikingly original absurdist farce by the winner of the 1983 Obie Award as Most Promising Young Playwright.
The play makes hilarious use of a remarkably inventive theatricality to explore deeper themes of loneliness, love, sexual panic and the scars of unhappy childhood.
“…dazzling verbal dexterity…one of the most intriguing new playwrights to have surfaced lately.” —New York Post.
“He writes smart, absurdist dialogue…and insists on making his own rules about comedy and behavior.” —The New York Times.
“…an absurdist farce with bitter under- and symbolic overtones…” —New York Magazine.
“…the work of a writer with a quirkily individual, witty voice and an emphatic gift for the stage.” —Village Voice.
