FUN and NOBODY
Fun and Nobody are American Kroetz. Kroetz crossed with David Mamet. A pair of related one-acts by Howard Korder of New York, the plays combine the fractured, lumpen jazz of a Mamet script like American Buffalo–“Where we goin’?” “I don’t know.” “OK!”–with the flat-footed sociopolitical bluntness of Request Concert Kroetz. They reimagine the capitalist kick in the teeth as administered by a culture wearing Air Jordans.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Obviously, both Fun and Nobody lend themselves to all the cliches of working-class angst. Hell, they’re consciously constructed out of those cliches. Director Dexter Bullard manages to reinvigorate Korder’s familiar gambits by leading his actors away from direct expressions of rage, playing instead on their reticence–their struggle to keep it all in. Tracy Letts as Carl manifests an eerily deadpan calm while his language grows more savage. Michael Shannon’s stunning Denny keeps his eyes moving across the floor, his screams stuck behind his scrawny ribs, as he and Joey Slotnick’s charmingly Dead End-ish Casper bounce from creaky banquette to lonely overpass, across Robert G. Smith’s appropriately tawdry, crowded set.
