CRIES FROM THE MAMMAL HOUSE
Certain questions haunt this play: Are we our fellow creatures’ keepers? Who’s really behind bars in that larger zoo we call the world? And what are our rights and wrongs as custodians of the planet? Similar questions haunted Arthur Kopit’s The Assignment: The End of the World, another Absolute Theatre production. But those haunting questions, even by the end of Cries From the Mammal House, have not really been answered.
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But, no question, the Absolute Theatre Company does give this play’s second professional production a winning two-and-a-half hours. Warner Crocker’s staging paces the scattershot passions better than the script might suggest. Never permitting the allegory to become too abstract, Crocker even confers a semblance of momentum on this meandering plot, no small feat considering its schizophrenic mood changes. Thomas Mitchell’s set, an open-barred cage effectively hung with murals of penned-up animals and people, is abstract enough to represent both parts of David’s journey. And Cameron gives David a true explorer’s enthusiasm, his quest and energy in sharp contrast with Baldacci’s burnt-out bitterness. As Anne, Elaine Carlson provides the best work of the night, a well-textured study in desperate hopelessness.
