Post Mortem: Saved From Obscurity

How come nobody ever writes plays about the Christian Left?  Is there a Christian Left?  I suppose they'd be made up of people who don't care to force their moral beliefs on others.  Or maybe they're just called Christians. 

 

In any case, A.R. Gurney is writing about the Christian Right in Post Mortem, his new comedy at the Flea Theatre which should provide plenty of laughs for New York liberals and plenty of "That's not funny" reactions from, well, people who aren't. 

 

Set in the near future, where the war in Iraq has depleted the American budget so much that all Broadway theatres have been turned into state-run casinos and religious zealots have such control over the government that most left-wingers have fled to Canada, we begin in the office of Alice (a severe but somewhat daffy Tina Benko), a lowly drama lecturer in a government funded university.  Always under the suspicion that her office may be bugged ("They think because we teach the humanities we're potentially subversives.") Tina is quietly acting out a scene from Tennessee Williams, a playwright who may be read privately, but never performed nor taught. 

 

Her student, Dexter (a eager and moony-eyed Christopher Kromer), is completely smitten with her, making ridiculously forward advances during a student teacher conference where he tries to convince her to work with him on his thesis paper.  She's not interested until he says he plans to write about an obscure 20^th and 21^st century playwright named A.R. Gurney. 

 

Gurney, it seems has become an almost forgotten figure in American theatre history.  A reference book describes his work as "middle class comedies of manners," but Dexter insists that's only his earlier plays.  The political plays he wrote later in life, explains the horny student desperate to get under his teacher's skirt, are the ones that really mattered. 

 

Through a lucky accident and a bit of detective work, Dexter has found the only copy of Gurney's last play; a play so powerful it could bring about world piece and end hunger.  It was never produced, even though Shubert Board Chairman Gerald Schoenfeld was planning to mount it at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.  ("It's good enough to require an English director.")  The main villian of the play is Vice President Dick Cheney, and Dexter suspects foul play in the circumstances behind why it was never produced and A.R. Gurney became regulated to obscurity.  A former actress itching to perform again, Alice agrees to join Dexter in putting on a reading, but their attempts to have Gurney's words heard are met with resistance from a government determined to undermine good theatre. 

 

Director Jim Simpson keeps it all light and crisp.  Benko and Kromer don't have much depth of character to work with – it's not that kind of play – but they both give appealing performances playing the humor of the situation, as does Shannon Burkett as an student with an obsession or two.  (Explaining her character's purpose would give away where Gurney takes the story.)  Though Gurney (the real one) caps off Post Mortem with a serious issue or two, the play is essentially a political sketch comedy.  But it's a good one, filled with consistent laughs and fun inside humor that you don't have to be a total insider to understand. 

 

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top:  Tina Benko and Christopher Kromer

Bottom:  Shannon Burkett, Christopher Kromer and Tina Benko