Durang Durang

An occasionally funny, but usually overstated, collection of sketches from writer Christopher Durang set in the noisy Udder Place. This was, in my opinion, a disappointing show from a writer who has been dubbed by The New Yorker as “one of the funniest playwrights alive”; I found myself cringing all too often at its over-laboured gags and stunted sense of humour. Given that the biggest laughs of the night came from cheap jokes about ‘retards’ one came to question the simplicity of the writer’s own mind. Furthermore parts of the script felt unedited and self-indulgent, such as an immature reflection on the prevalence of AIDS among drug addicts and homosexuals, a sketch which seemed literally devoid of an actual joke, and suggested the writer simply didn’t have the subtlety or expertise to tackle such a loaded subject.

I’m not criticising the use of crass humour, just that the jokes were often painfully obvious and those moments where a more effective comedic landscape was created were usually tainted by the need to overstate the point and reconnect with a reality from which the writing itself seemed to crave an escape. For example a lunatic who doesn’t realise they are a lunatic is usually funnier than a lunatic who tells us they are a lunatic to explain their odd behaviour. That said, however, the production and some of its actors, were not without skill and there were in fact a number of very amusing moments within the more effective of the sketches. The humour tended to be at its funniest when exaggerated beyond the everyday into the deliciously ridiculous. Modern-day ‘Medea’ had echoes of Monty Python, cookie obsessive ‘Phyllis and Xenobia’ reminded of ‘The Green Wing’, and ‘Noami in the Living room’ was reminiscent of Edward Albee’s ‘The American Dream’; a sketch which was brave enough to go a step beyond and indulge its absurdist elements. These more experimental moments were actually very funny and a couple of the cast members had fine comedy timing, it is simply a shame that the writing was often ill-equipped to show its actors off.