HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN NINE ELEVEN

WHY TORTURE IS WRONG AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM
presented by The New Theatre, June 2014

This 2009 post-modern farce by Christopher Durang features a highly sophisticated stupidity unique to the realpolitik of the U.S.A. – the venomous satire managing to out-do itself at every turn, ridiculing a world that already verges into calamitous absurdity. What more can be said to ridicule the kind of culture in which the purchase of aerosol cheese is a regular event? The play is beyond parody, veering between darker and darker shades of reality in all the colours of the nightmarish rainbow. Blood Red. Jaundice Yellow. Pustular Pink. Bourgeoisie Beige. Paranoid Purple.

The script is rife with zingers, clangers and WTFs. Admirably cast for deliciously over-the-top Yankee accents with soap-bubble portrayal of its slimy inhabitants delivering a mile-a-minute comedy with a lewd edge, shrewdly leading us down into the rabbit hole of bad-to-worse choices that seem to define the modern psyche of the U.S. Media cycle: Sex and Ammo, War On Terror, Axis of Evil Marching Band, Sarah Palin on Fox News. It’s worth noting the timeline of the play’s inception, post-Bush, post-Guantanamo, post-Abu Ghraib, the writer demonstrates a immeasurable disdain for the politics of patriotism and the rhetoric of war, acidly venting at the feverish media participation in the perpetual mythology of heroism.

Nothing is unscathed here, music, film and theatre jokes abound, slut-shaming, pornography, racial profiling, sexual violence, alcoholism all feature in Durang’s repartee. It’s not a play for the faint-of-heart, but rather one that rails in a delirious snarling bout of Theatrical Tourette’s. This production delivers with spades, folding in pop-culture motifs with the self-awareness of the script, like the TV-Studio set or casually visible vocal warm-ups between scenes suggesting a host of hidden ironies and inter-textual wit. You can spend hours unpacking all the subtle references and meta-gags at play, or just strap yourself in for a whirlwind tour of outrageous and kinky myth-busting.

Dangerous writing, almost certainly offensive, and wicked. If you like Homeland, you’ll never look at it the same way again.

WHY TORTURE IS WRONG AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM
by Christopher Durang
Directed by Melita Rowston, featuring Peter Astridge, Romy Bartz, Ryan Gibson, Terry Karabelas, Alice Livingstone, Ainslie McGlynn and Annie Schofield
Playing at the New Theatre until June 28,