GRANDMA DUCK IS DEAD
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As drawer plays go, this early work by the author of The Foreigner and The Nerd about college-buddy bonding is pretty good. The usual treacle about having to grow up and move on is nicely contrasted with some genuinely inventive plotting and some amusing situations. Though Grandma Duck Is Dead won’t blow anyone away with its originality, it’s compelling enough to entertain an audience for 90 minutes.
The play begins like a warped early Doonesbury cartoon. The year is 1968 and Woody (Paul Mullins), a college senior and amateur hypnotist, is laboring away at the standard moronic eight-to-ten pager about Dostoyevski’s debt to Dickens when his pal Badge (David David Katzman) distracts him from his work, inviting him to frolic about in a number of role-playing games. The two wrestle on the floor of Woody’s dorm room, do impressions, quote favorite works of literature, chuckle over in-jokes, and leap around imitating the world’s most brilliant panda and his stern taskmaster. The silliness wears a bit thin after a few minutes, as Woody and Badge resemble less the pair of brilliant comedians they fancy themselves and more a couple of spazzes from the science-fiction club.
The title refers to a time when Woody hypnotized Esperanza into thinking he was Donald Duck and Woody, Badge, and Ben were Huey, Dewey, and Louie. The game was funny enough until one of the three duck cousins quacked that Grandma Duck was dead. Esperanza was inconsolable, because he understood that the dream was over, that the games weren’t funny anymore. The specters of adulthood and Vietnam loom over the heads of the characters, poor little ducks who must find their way in the world alone.
