Bring Me the Head of John Ford: Funnyhouse of a Cowboy

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 14^th 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.

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