On the Edge Theatre Company Igloo, the Theatrical Group Off-Off Loop Theatre Festival at the Theatre Building
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The three plagues to devastate the 80s were of course government, television, and sex (categories large enough to let OTE throw in sketches they’ve had kicking around for some time. Government (represented by a demagogue who runs on a platform that would sound natural coming from a crazy on the Broadway bus) isn’t half as ubiquitous as sex. Both pale before television. Nothing is sacred to the tube: the Marriage of Marie Tyler Braun crushes Fassbinder into sitcom as a vaporously Teutonic Mary bitterly spits out “Life is a sweltering, disease-ridden trough of despair,” while Lou Grant, dead from sheer angst, lies sprawled behind her.
In the 80s the war between the sexes reached the point where a fiancee tests her betrothed by short-answer questions (“Would you still love me if someone cut off my arm?”), and even a simulated combat in which he gets to prove how willingly he’d sacrifice his life for hers. (Not to worry: in 2067 there are no genitalia to fight over, a minor point Edgewise perversely refuses to explain.)
