THE INDIAN WANTS THE BRONX
Stark Raving Ensemble at Cafe Voltaire
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Stark Raving Ensemble’s extremely low budget production of The Indian Wants the Bronx–with its dirt-poor minimal set in Cafe Voltaire’s cold, musty, unswept basement–is a case in point. I would be surprised if the three actors who put together this revival of Israel Horovitz’s disturbing 1968 play, about a pair of delinquents who torment a poor East Indian lost somewhere in New York, make enough after expenses each night to buy themselves three bowls of chili upstairs. Yet they throw themselves so completely into their roles that I never doubted for a moment that once Murph (Todd Tesen) and Joey (Mitchel R. McElya) finished with poor Gupta (Michael John Stewart) we might be next.
But Horovitz’s brutal play is not actor-proof; in the hands of hesitant, inhibited, or inexperienced actors it could be death. Happily, this is not the case here. Tesen, McElya, and Stewart display the kind of intensity I associate more with the tougher films of Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, Goodfellas) or with Steppenwolf in its earlier, hungrier incarnation than with the significantly safer, subdued work of today’s Equity companies. When Murph went crazy with anger near the end of the play and started throwing around a garbage can, I thought for sure someone in the audience was going to get hit. This is easily the most powerful show I’ve seen since Cactus Theatre’s incredible production of Hurly Burly last year.
It doesn’t help that of Dan Ruben’s eight-member cast only Mary Booker, Tracey Atkins, and David Ward have a clue about how to perform comedy. The others either overact like hell–Jim Cantafio’s problem–or make such a conscious effort to “act funny” that they aren’t.
