May 7th, 2008
4x4: The Ballet Project (White Bird) | Four on the floor: All ballet, all night long.0 comments
May 7th, 2008
Spring Awakenings | It’s May! The sun is out! Bring on the homoerotic turmoil!0 comments
April 23rd, 2008
The Long Christmas Ride Home | Theatre Vertigo shakes up the floating world.0 comments
April 16th, 2008
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (Oregon Ballet Theatre) | Oregon Ballet Theatre shoots to thrill with Balanchine's Slaughter.1 comment
April 16th, 2008
Too Cool For Words | NYC’s Wordless Music Series comes to Portland.1 comment
April 9th, 2008
Sometimes a Great Notion (PCS) | REVIEW: We are lumberjacks. We’re not OK.3 comments
April 2nd, 2008
Air-Condition (White Bird Dance) | PREVIEW: Brenda Angiel’s floating dance party.0 comments
March 26th, 2008
The Tudor Choir | Mozart: the original music pirate.0 comments
March 19th, 2008
Albert Herring (Portland Opera) | Spitzeresque tale: Chastity is the best policy.0 comments
March 12th, 2008
Divas and Decapitation | Big-headed queens or beheaded teen? Take your pick.0 comments
![]() COCKFIGHT: Damon Kupper & Michael O’Connell peck and strut. IMAGE: Owen Carey |
[April 30th, 2008]
The trouble with most “comedies with a conscience” is that the laughs are usually balanced with an equal measure of sincere exhortations and emotional passing of the hat. That’s fine for tragedies, domestic dramas and indefinable ensemble pieces, but most people don’t want to be harangued when they’re out looking for a good time. Shavian didacticism is a surefire way to wear out an audience long before curtain.
Enter Peter Barnes. The late British playwright, best known in the U.S. as the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of 1992’s Enchanted April, penned searing social critiques with the stated intention of changing the world—plays that are both inspiring and infuriating, but smartly refrain from saddling the audience with tiresome polemics. His work is rarely produced, in part thanks to his penchant for enormous casts and improbable settings, but mostly because he prods us, firmly, in our most bruised and tender places. Barnes mined both the Holocaust and the Black Death for comedy with more style than Mel Brooks could ever hope to muster.
Nobody Here But Us Chickens, a trio of one-acts unrelated but for a shared theme of disability, is more restrained than most of Barnes’ canon. The first plays with our perceptions of psychosis, the second asks whether an obsession with physical fitness can itself be a disability, and the third offers a surprising and endearing twist on the classic British sex farce. Since much of the comedy relies on surprise, I won’t say any more about the plot. Suffice it to say they would be very offensive (and not nearly as funny) in the hands of a lesser writer.
Third Rail Rep’s production follows Barnes’ lead, nailing the sight gags and one-liners and letting the author’s agenda sink in on its own. You could hardly ask for a better cast: John Steinkamp, Damon Kupper, Michael O’Connell, Maureen Porter, Valerie Stevens and Philip Cuomo are a veritable comedy all-star team. The company’s usual design team has been busy, too—the seemingly simple set hides some devilish tricks. It’s an impassioned production, and the company is determined to make it available to everyone with an ASL-interpreted peformance (May 1) and an audio-described matinee (May 4).









