MORE FUN THAN BOWLING
The protagonist, Jake Tomlinson, makes his entrance from beneath the soil of a freshly turned grave. He believes he will be assassinated soon, “and when that happens I’m gonna have to live there in that grave for a longer time than I care to think about,” he explains to the audience. “So, I thought I’d try to get the flavor of it so maybe I’d have a better outlook on gettin’ killed.” Violating the boundaries of reality still further, Jake reaches through the dirt to pull out a lawn chair and the copy of Reader’s Digest he’s been perusing during his underground experiment. “Brand-new,” he says of the magazine as he sits down to read it. “Never even been in the bathroom.”
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Jake’s monologues occasionally verge on the psychotic. He is hopelessly paranoid, convinced he’s marked for death. When his daughter startles him by pedaling up on her bicycle, he hurls his Reader’s Digest at her and screams “Die, sucker!”
Part of the problem, no doubt, is the uneven production being offered by the Stage Two Theatre Company in Waukegan. Bryan Simon, the founder of Stage Two and the director of this production, deserves a lot of credit just for tackling this unusual comedy. Dietz, who lives in Seattle, is not a well-known playwright (he wrote the book for Ten November, staged a few years ago at the Wisdom Bridge Theatre); his name certainly wouldn’t attract an audience. And the loopy quality of More Fun Than Bowling is sure to annoy theatergoers who prefer a more linear narrative.
