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Who\'s Your Daddy?
by Marlon Hurt
Hiding Behind Comets reviewed February 17, 2005
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| (l-r) Moira MacDonald and Dan Moran in 29th Street Rep's production of Hiding Behind Comets |
| The issue of paternity occupies a hallowed place in Western drama. The topic's draw, of course, is the intuitively satisfying idea that such intangibles as fate are just as inheritable as the more concrete, biological traits passed from father to son—think Sophocles's Oedipus Rex on down to modern-day works like Sam Shepard's Fool for Love.
To my knowledge, however, Brian Dykstra's Hiding Behind Comets, now making its New York premiere at 29th Street Rep, is the first drama to approach the subject by way of the old speculation about hopping in a time machine and killing a mass murderer—usually Hitler—before he commits his crimes. To wit, would you or should you? And what ethical issues are raised by either taking action and killing a person still innocent of wrongdoing, or leaving history untouched, with all its thousands or millions of corpses?
Granted, there is no time machine in the small, family-owned pub where 22-year-old fraternal twins Troy (Robert Mollohan) and Honey (Moira MacDonald) tend bar and agitate to leave for a local party, respectively. There is, however, a very sinister first-time patron named Cole (Dan Moran). As he shares his ever more disturbing tales of mass death in the jungles of South America, and hints that a similar slaughter could lie in the future, the coincidence of his visit to Troy and Honey's little dive is called into question.
Unfortunately, the details of Dykstra's premise, which boils down to the "why" of Cole's appearance, are, in the main, somewhat flimsy. (The play does begin with the simplicity of a dirty joke, after all: "A man walks into a bar...") Perhaps in reaction to this thinness, Dykstra spends a lot of extra verbiage trying to imbue the situation with the emotional and intellectual heft necessary to make it credible. He does succeed at times, often through wonderfully raunchy humor. But it is when the play becomes an out-and-out death match (whose end can be decided only by settling an issue of paternity) that Comets earns its billing as an "edge-of-your-seat thriller."
With both the play's problems and strengths in mind, Dykstra is extremely fortunate to have Moran in the role of Cole. With the gruff integrity of a street thug following a moral imperative to its end, no matter what that end may be, Moran brings out the true menace of Cole's single-mindedness. And his mesmerizing monologue detailing the horrors of his experience in South America is enough to justify the play's existence. (This monologue is expertly lifted from the rest of the piece's reality by Douglas Cox's astute lighting.)
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| (l-r) Dan Moran and Moira MacDonald in 29th Street Rep's production of Hiding Behind Comets |
| Elsewhere, the performances are more varied in quality. MacDonald is often exceptional as the intentionally provocative Honey. Her spontaneous onstage orgasm, for instance, is on par for believability with Meg Ryan's in When Harry Met Sally... And her outright devotion to her brother is both unexpectedly touching and utterly compelling.
Sadly, Mollohan as Troy is less convincing. While handsome, he is simply not charismatic enough to make Troy into the snake-charmer personality Cole is so worried about—the conceit on which the play's tension hinges—though he does do very good work with the many lighter moments given to him.
Underused, alas, is Amber Gallery as Troy's girlfriend Erin. Delightfully ditzy, she is nevertheless abandoned by Dykstra after her exit in the first act, leaving us to wonder if her character was at all necessary to the story's telling in the first place.
On the other hand, Mark Symczak's realistic bar interior very much deserves a nod. Complete with beer bottle-strewn jukebox, his set ably centers the work's small-town aesthetic.
In its world premiere at the Cincinnati Playhouse, Hiding Behind Comets made headlines when the wealthy Rosenthal family pulled their funding due to what they saw as the play's obscene nature. While at bottom Comets never quite escapes the limitations of its armchair-ethicist speculating, it certainly amounts to more than just a dirty joke. A man does walk into a bar, but it is Dykstra's skill that keeps us guessing as to which man will walk out.
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29th Street Rep
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Category: Drama
Written by: Brian Dykstra
Directed by: David Mogentale
Produced by: 29th Street Rep (Tim Corcoran and David Mogentale, Artistic Directors) and Darren Lee Cole
Opened: February 10, 2005
Closed: March 13, 2005
Running Time: 120 minutes
Theater: 29th Street Rep
Address: 212 W. 29th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues
New York, NY 10001
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Tickets: $19.00
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Creative Team
Written by: Brian Dykstra
Directed by: David Mogentale
Produced by: 29th Street Rep & Darren Lee Cole
Light Designer: Douglas Cox
Sound Designer/Composer: Tim Cramer
Set Designer: Mark Symczak
Cast
Amber Gallery as Erin
Moira MacDonald as Honey
Robert Mollohan as Troy
Dan Moran as Cole
Crew
Production/Stage Manager: Walter Guzman
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