Fondly, Collette Richland

Well this one was a doozy.  I could spend a few dozen hours down the rabbit hole trying to analyze this wacka-doodle "show" now running at the New York Theatre Workshop . But instead I think I will just list all the words that come to mind when reflecting on my mystifying experience in the theatre.  In full disclosure I only felt that staying for one act was bearable, but I do hear that act II was similar and the torture factor far outweighed the artistic factors.  Here are those words:

• Incoherent
• Smart
• Incomprehensible
• Colorful
• Mesmerizing
• Bizarre
• LSD
• Imaginative
• Experimental
• Unsatisfying

The show is a pastiche of ideas, colors, words, costumes.  What it is not is coherent.  It's a piece of mental theater.  I was, however, really impressed with the actors who had to learn these bizarro parts.  They don't make sense and I can only assume that it is like telling an opera singer to intentionally sing off key.  For a trained professional that's hard to do.  These actors were superb given the extremely bizarre and colorful material they were given to work with.   I made it only through Act I, but I have heard that Act II was even more of the same.  Experimental performance art should not be 2 Hours and 40 Minutes long.