Clubbed Thumb

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Grief Hotel

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Grief Hotel

Liza Birkenmeier’s Grief Hotel was part of Clubbed Thumb’s 2023 Summerworks program, and now comes to the Public Theater for a more extended engagement. This is great news, because the play very much deserves a longer look and wider audience. It is presented in partnership with New Georges, who produce “weird, weird-ish, and often impossible plays”; Grief Hotel is weird—gloriously so—but it’s not impossible. In fact, the strength of the play lies in Birkenmeier’s canny creation of an offbeat yet accessible style, thanks to her sharp ear for dialogue that is fundamentally naturalistic and works in productive combination with the play’s slightly surreal, collage-like structure, directed with bracing clarity by Tara Ahmadinejad.

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Tumacho

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Tumacho

Tumacho, the Clubbed Thumb production now playing a return engagement at the Connelly Theater, begins with a chorus of performers onstage. Their faces are lit hauntingly in red as they sing a solemn tale, introducing how “hope has left/from a town bereft” and the need for “lasting peace.” The scene should be a downtrodden one—except it isn’t these human performers that are supposed to be doing the singing. Instead, it’s the saguaro cactus puppets (complete with Muppet-like faces) each singer wields that are narrating this haggard tale. This grizzled silliness comes to define Tumacho, a portrait of the Wild West where characters combat ennui, hopelessness, and impending doom—without ever taking themselves too seriously.

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