POO POO LE ARSE!
Metraform
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Which may explain why Napier’s most recent shows have been a marked departure. In his last show, for example, Dumb Ass Leaves the Carnival, he abandoned the inspired silliness of his earlier work in favor of a rich, resonant, heartfelt allegory about show business and the destructive allure of money. His current show, with the rather infantile title Poo Poo Le Arse, is another radical departure–it’s surreal and absurdist.
There are flashes of marvelous comedy throughout the show–spontaneous musical scenes, unexpected dance numbers, superb, eccentric conversations–but its premise inhibits its surrealist potential. Sure we get to spend a lot of the play getting to know the various bizarre inmates–theres a man who thinks he’s Adolf Hitler, a woman missing an arm who thinks she’s missing a leg. But confining the action of the play to a nuthouse provides a disappointingly easy explanation for every odd thin that happens: oh, those crazy people say and do the craziest things! No matter how insane things become in the asylum–and they do get rather strange–they never reach the freewheeling, mind-bending, fever-dream pitch of Tzara’s theatrical nightmare The Gas Heart, because Poo Poo’s naturalistic hospital setting grounds the show too much in reality.
Over the course of this show we meet, among others, an overly perky housewife (Mary Wachtel), an eccentric immigrant from an unnamed foreign country (Nancy Giangrasse), a very depressed unemployed man (Matt Walsh) who never changes out of his pajamas–all of whom are looking forward to the annual “building picnic.” These characters are flatter than your average Annoyance creations, yet they’re realized with the sort of committed intensity we’ve come to expect from the company. Beth Cahill in particular can do no wrong as an obsessive-compulsive house cleaner.
