It had to happen, eventually, but it still hurts. Buntport Theatre Company, those collaborative creators of eight years’ worth of funny, inventive and zippy new works, has come up with one that sinks rather than sparkles.
Mom never surfaces, but visible in the house are her warring daughters, the extremely pregnant and telenovela-obsessed Colby and the careerist Heather, played by Erin Rollman and Hannah Duggan. Colby’s husband, J.J. (Brian Colonna), is devoting his life to the study of jigsaw puzzles, while their uncle, Eugene (Evan Weissman), struggles for respect from nieces who are older than he is.Things never quite gel in Vote for Uncle Marty, the company’s comedy about a family of five living in an upside-down house, where the ceiling is the floor, the arched doorways provide an impediment to walking and light fixtures protrude from the floor.
Meanwhile, everyone calls their visitor Uncle Marty (Erik Edborg). He’s a stranger who wandered into the house six years ago and has since been Heather’s project as she prepares his campaign for city council. Marty has no reason to run. He has no platform, no desires, no philosophy. But he’s friendly. People like him. And Heather has been coaching Marty on his gestures (Clintonian thumbs) and searching for a meaningless slogan.
The satire is a little too spot-on. Candidates more enamored of process than belief have been mocked before and better.
The writing suffers here, but other Buntport assets continue to shine. Rollman and Weissman in particular display ever more nuanced acting. Her character is infuriatingly passive-aggressive; watch her eat peas for a bit of performance immersion. Weissman is dark and strange here, obsessed that he is the only one troubled by the house’s geographic disorientation.
The house is its own triumph, a full-size first floor that looks as though it could withstand a hurricane.
Vote for Uncle Marty strives to be a comic analogy to our contemporary world. But saying the world is upside-down doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know. It’s not terribly profound, which is OK; but it’s not very funny, either.
-Lisa Bornstein, September 21st, 2007, Rocky Mountain News