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Post5 Theatre's Durang Durang, a collection of six one-act plays by absurdist playwright Christopher Durang, touches on grave issues: domestic violence, parental abuse and mental health.
But it doesn't go deep. Instead, Durang glosses over anything too serious with an exaggerated wink and heavy dose of black humor. Bitter Southern belles, mostly deaf warehouse workers and Novocain-happy former dentists are just a handful of Durang's random collection of characters. Buckle up; things get weirder.
Helmed by director Sam Dinkowitz, Durang Durang enters a world where no one balks at a son kicking in his mother's door, but a struggling married couple can't stand up to the crazy ex-girlfriend who still insists on sharing their bed. The performance bounces between living and dining rooms—from the aforementioned couple's tidy dinner table to a backwoods Southern family's dilapidated couch and trash-strewn floor.
In "Mrs. Sorken," the bumbling title character—played by Keith Cable in a heinously sparkly outfit—delivers a monologue about "the-A-ter" and how "we go to theater to cure ourselves of the nausea of life." In "A Stye in the Eye," the unhinged and violent Jake (Cable, again) fears he has just beaten his wife to death. Suffering from multiple personality disorder, Jake escalates a quarrel with his imaginary brother and his brother's lover (…and possibly sister too? We lose track) until a one-sided gunfight ensues.
Ridiculous lines fly fast, and the play's physical movements are extreme. But the ensemble cast—the strongest I've seen at Post5—handles absurd theater without missing a beat. Entire lines were drowned out by audience laughter at an opening-weekend performance when Pat Janowski lisped perfectly through a fallen face-lift and Phillip J. Berns awkwardly clawed across the floor toward his character's beloved collection of cocktail stirrers. Everything in Durang Durang is undeniably strange, it's true, but it's all the more entertaining for it.
One solemn moment resurfaces throughout, however: Unconnected characters softly repeat the line, "Now, if only I was happy." These forlorn murmurs ache a little but are few and far between. You're not supposed to think about the pain, plus there's hardly time for philosophizing between laughs.
SEE IT: Durang Durang is at Post5 Theatre, 1666 SE Lambert St., 971-258-8584. 7:30 pm Fridays-Sundays through March 28 (Thursday show March 26). $20, pay-what-you-can Sundays.
WWeek 2015