What if you came home one day and, say, your wall paintings were turned upside down, but you didn’t even notice? Eventually the upside-down version might begin to look more “right” to you than wrong. And what if you came home one day and your TV were turned to a 90-degree angle … but rather than turn it right, you simply starting watching TV with a crooked neck?

Buntport Theatre’s 22nd original production, “Vote for Uncle Marty,” seems to be warning audiences that when you passively allow one incremental change after another to happen to you without question or protest,

Now apply this thinking to everything from the electoral system to civil liberties to the Iraq war to your own marriage.well then, one day you might find that your whole world has been turned upside down. And you let it happen to you, right before your eyes.

Welcome to Buntport Theater’s head-first dive into Ionesco’s absurdist pond – only more fun. Only Buntport could conjure a challenging, comically disturbing play that combines the paranoia of a Talking Heads video with the family dynamics of a Thornton Wilder play with the skewed perspective of “Being John Malkovich” or an M.C. Escher painting.

This innovative collaborative company, which writes, directs, designs, acts, builds and probably showers as one, tells all its stories from mind- bending points of view. One took place suspended 3 feet above the ground; another entirely in an elevator; and who could ever forget Kafka – on ice?

“Uncle Marty” takes place in a brilliantly built upside- down house, where a bizarro family of unhappy eccentrics must avoid the ceiling fan on the “floor” as they walk. Who vacuum the carpet on the “ceiling.” Who must step over arched doorways to move into the next room.

Most are intractably oblivious. Colby (Erin Rollman) is a pregnant delusional lost in her world of Spanish soap operas she can’t even understand; husband J.J. (Brian Colonna) is a theorist who contemplates jigsaw-puzzle solutions without ever actually touching a piece. Heather (Hannah Duggan) has for seven years been running a pointless exploratory campaign to determine whether her inept Uncle Marty (who’s neither her uncle nor named Marty) should run for town council. An unseen matriarch never leaves her room. These are the habits of five highly ineffective people.

It’s only the crazy-haired, conspiracy-theory rebel anarchist Uncle Gene (Evan Weissman, at his best) who acknowledges that something is very wrong in this world. Crazy- haired, we learn, because he finds his oasis by hanging upside down from moon boots. It’s in these few fleeting moments of “suspended belief,” with blood rushing to his brain, that things look to Gene as they should.

This conceit ranks among Buntport’s most clever of inspirations. But while these youngsters never explain their worlds or telegraph where they might be taking you next, neither are they typically as obtuse in their storytelling.

“Marty” is navigable, but also abstract and circuitous, never building to that expected “aha!” epiphany that lets you fully in on its purpose. That’s fine if you’re doing Beckett or Pinter, but Buntport is usually much more accessible and absorbing. So while “Marty” is a treat for veterans, it’s not the ideal introduction if you’ve not seen Buntport’s work before.

The most cogent scenes allow the staunchly platform- free candidate Marty (Erik Edborg) to blithely spoof the inanities of American political campaigns, which is humorous if a bit obvious.

Weissman’s volatile explosion clarifies that the target here is not so much the powerful but you and me. The play is a condemnation of complacency, of everyday ineffectiveness, of our steadfast need for all the pieces to fit together in a world where the puzzle keeps changing.

“Marty” is payback for our letting Bush steal the election(s). For allowing the Patriot Act. For turning into a nation of oblivious “passivists” with a dogged need to believe that everything is perfectly … normal. For the collective abdication of our civic responsibility to ask questions, to watchdog, to protest … to turn the painting right side up.

Problem is, if you stare into an Escher painting long enough, after a while, who’s to say what’s right side up?

-John Moore, September 28th, 2007, Denver Post