Scientists have long known that cockroaches would survive a nuclear war. They didn’t warn us about Hall and Oates.
A mix tape and a Scrabble game survive the apocalypse in Fin, the latest original comedy by Buntport Theater Company. Imagine: eternity with nine E’s but only one K, and an endlessly revolving soundtrack of George Michael, Louis Prima and, worst of all, REM’s It’s the End of the World As We Know It.
“If I’d known it was gonna be the Post-Apocalyptic Tape instead of Smooth Driving 3, I wouldn’t have put it in,” explains Dob (Brian Colonna), one of three survivors.
Dob is eager to continue the human race (or at least try), but his female companions have other plans. Mae (Hannah Duggan) spends the early part of the play in biohazard overalls, breathing through a mask and using a tube to speak. To Edie (Erin Rollman), that tube isn’t for talkin’, it’s for hittin’ — dressed in punk-rock combat gear, she’s itching to take on any alien comers.
The six-member theater group (the three actors plus Matt Petraglia, Samantha Schmitz and Erik Edborg) develops its plays together, and like earlier works Quixote and 2 in 1, Fin (French for “end”) is laced with hilariously observed details.
Many of the jokes bounce off the mix tape and Scrabble game. Others come from the flights of fancy that occur when the world has ended, it’s days later, and everyone is really bored. At one point, Edie (given a riotous angry bluster by Rollman) poses the essential mystery of Murder, She Wrote (and it isn’t that a person under 60 had seen the show). Angela Lansbury, she decides, was the arch villain. “Everywhere she went, people were murdered! EVERYWHERE SHE WENT!”
The members of Buntport seem to have angular minds, zigging where another person would take a gentle curve. But the many funny moments they create lack a structure to hold them together. Unlike other Buntport pieces, Fin lacks a plot, or even a central thread, to force the play to cohere. Blackouts after each joke make it feel more like sketch comedy. It’s terribly funny, but Fin needs a stronger story to carry us through the end.
-Lisa Bornstein, June 13, 2001, Rocky Mountain News