GRAHAM’S AVENUE
Greenhouse, South Hall
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Even though we guess the secret known to only one of the two mothers in Homecoming, once it’s revealed Graham addresses what’s to be done about it. By the end of the play nothing definite has been said–for Graham’s characters rarely say more than necessary–but we have the proper Texas matron’s grim expression to tell us the denouement. The blue-collar narrator of A Bouquet of Elbows takes what seems forever to get to his point, but when his rambling monologue about the day he lost both his girlfriend and his best buddy takes a scary turn, we’re grateful for his evasion, which softens our confrontation with a horror approaching tragedy. And though Ernst brings onstage the familiar visage of Adolf Hitler, that most overworked of shock tactics, it’s not presented as an answer in itself but as the launching point for a series of questions about the end of freedom and democracy in America.
