"Laughing Wild"

A skirmish between two supermarket shoppers leads to a pummeling. As dreams of revenge become the play’s satirical springboard diving into life’s perils submerging it with 1980s cultural icons.

“Laughing Wild” is presented by The Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts.

Award-winning playwright Christopher Durang wrote “Laughing Wild” in 1987. He starred opposite E. Katherine Kerr in the original production. It enjoyed a successful run later that year, presented by Playwrights Horizons in New York.

In 2003, Durang reunited with Kerr in a special, four-performance-only revival for a cult following of the play in New York. This is the play’s first showing in Boston. 

This is a two-person, three-part play.

Act I consists of two, stream-of-consciousness monologues, one from “Woman,” the other from “Man.”         

In Act II, Man and Woman appear in mutual, interwoven dreams in which they plot revenge on each other.

Debra Monk plays “Woman,” a 40-something, hefty, wacky, short-fused, suicidal alcoholic with the annoying, piercing laugh of a hyena.

She starts her monologue saying, “It’s just too difficult to be alive, isn’t it? and to try to function?”

A man irritated her in the market’s aisle. This total stranger was blocking her reach for a can of Chicken-of-the-Sea tuna. Oblivious to her surging impatience, the man takes his time, muttering to himself, reading the tedious fine print on the can’s label.

The woman sees this as blatant disrespect towards her. Angered, she shoves him aside, grabbing a can of tuna, whacks his head hard with it, sending him sprawling onto the floor. She leaves without concern.

Out at the curbside, she barges into a cab with a driver finishing up his
workday. Insisting tersely on a ride then along on the way, she blurts out her life story of battling alcoholism, mental counseling, and her attempts at suicide to the disinterested driver.

Christopher Durang portrays “Man,” a 40-something, new age, self-improvement geek whose head churns with unsettling questions.

For example, he was dumbfounded that a woman, an unprovoked total stranger would suddenly bang his head with a hard, metal can in the market.

He is no couch potato; his bright mind is restless. He worries about practically everything under the sun; including his job, his bisexuality, Aids, the role of Christianity, and rulings of the Supreme Court.

In the process of self-realization, he practices transcendental meditation. He utters a long, soothing, Ooom-sounding mantra while focusing on the In-and-Out of his inner breath: the Chi.

In Act II, the man and the woman have curiously synchronized dreams, conjuring up different endings to their earlier, rowdy confrontation.

Unfortunately, these dream-vignettes lack substance and dissipate like faces in clouds. They settle as rehearsal’s rejected takes that failed to give new insight to the original scene. Revenge ought to be, at least, ruinous and delectable.    

In a long sequence, they are detoured by bizarre dreams.

Woman dreamt that she had killed an 80s TV talk-show icon, Sally Jesse Raphael, and has taken over her job as daytime television maven.

Man dreamt that he was Catholicism’s often displayed, Holy Infant of Prague, who is now a guest on Raphael’s show in his full regalia, interviewed by
Woman, who sports Sally’s signature, oversize fire engine red glasses.
   
Things disintegrate rapidly as both Man and Woman are sucked into each other’s orbit of retro, farcical dreams.

The audience was gamely dragged along like an indulgent spouse, itching to head home.

Durang, an Obie Award-winning, Tony-nominated, veteran playwright, should show his vast creativity by jumping to revamp “Laughing Wild” into a sparkling play for a new millennium audience.

“Laughing Wild” will run until June 26 at the BCA. For information call (617) 266-0800.