Quite possibly the most boring play I have ever seen

Pyrenees. The Kirk Douglas Theatre. 7/27/06.

There's something ironic about a play about purification in the snow performed in the middle of LA in a heat wave. Unfortunately, that was probably the most interesting thing about David Greig's play, Pyrenees. To me, this play in which the main character (played by Tom Irwin) awakes in a mountain pass with amnesia seemed to be the self-indulgent fantasy of a straight, middle-aged white man. Begining with what could have been a tantalizing mystery of his identity, the play devolved into a flirtation with a beautiful young civil servant sento to help him (played by Tessa Thompson). For the almost the entire first half of the play, these two chatted at a maddeningly slow pace. The highlight of the play was the arrival of Frances Conroy, a superb actress who also managed to pick up the pace of the play and provide a small amout of interest and dramatic tension. Unfortunately, she wasn't in the production nearly enough to hold my interest.

The audience of this play consisted mainly of people with white hair, and perhaps they got more out of this deliberate production than I did. Its meditation on the responsibility and regret that come with aging might strike a chord with some, but overall I found it a pretentious attempt at existentialism that was more vapid than provokative and thus almost unendurably dull. It was a bad sign that director Neel Keller was quoted in the program essay (by fascinating formerly-local theater critic Rob Kendt) as saying "David's plays have a shot in America because, at the end of the day, they're more emotional than political." Ugh.

I did, however, love the set designed by Mark Wendland. Its beautiful three tiers were sadly under utilized, but they created a sense of the limbo in which the play took place.