Noah Haidle's "Rag and Bone" plays like an over-extended Mad TV sketch with delusions of philosophical grandeur.
The tale of two brothers, George (Jacob Ware) and Jeff (Adam Prugh), who use their ladder store as a front to sell black-market hearts, "Rag and Bone" features a haphazard gang of formulaic characters, all of whom exist as mouthpieces for the playwright's foggy agenda. Over an excruciating 90 minutes, George steals a poet's heart, installs it in a rich man, and finally coerces his brother into putting their mother's heart in his body, ostensibly so that he can spend the remainder of the play acting like "The Birdcage's" Nathan Lane.
Under Scott Allen Luke's frenzied direction, Jeff appears manic, George vacillates between near retardation and simple obtuseness, and T-Bone (Will Jones) the Cowardly Lion pimp (yes, there's a pimp) is unsympathetic and offensive. Wendy Mateo, the sassy hooker (yes, there's a hooker) gets off the lightest. While the character's actions are incomprehensible, at least she has some witty lines which Mateo tosses off with irreverent verve.
While there are a few laugh-out-loud exchanges (at one point George admits to his clueless brother that he has another career. Jeff responds, "Are you a spy?" George: "No." Jeff: "Are you gay?" George: "No, and that's not a job!"), the characters exhibit no rational motives, generally wander around taking about Bermuda, and every single one of them has mother issues up the wazoo.
The play's final words are saved for the re-hearted poet who freezes action to read a poem rife with cliched imagery that says something along the lines of, "That's what the poem is about. That's what this play is about, too." General rule: If a playwright feels compelled to call upon a one of his characters to flat out tell his audience what they've just seen, chances are he didn't do his job. Not only that, but he knows it.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
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