As a second-year playwriting minor in college, I penned a pseudo-profound drama about a mother visiting her daughter in a psych ward, complete with super-stylized dialogue. My prudent professor smoothly suggested I write scenes closer to my own humble life, less arty and pretentious. I hope someone has a similar kind talk with Keiko Green after her fanciful comedy finishes its run.
This pedantic mashup of The Bacchae and environmental armageddon—which also includes music by Jesse Smith—chronicles a crew of castoff cottontails who form a clique bent on environmental revenge against humanity. These murderous bunnies are far less fearsome or funny than Monty Python’s Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog; in fact they draw inspiration from the pet rabbits abandoned in Woodland Park, where a huge feral warren now thrives.
Green’s ambition—undertaken via a hodgepodge of theatrical devices—is to indict the ass-hat pet owners who cruelly dump said rabbits in the park. Here those forlorn animals (played by eight actresses) serve as a Greek chorus—usually the province of drama, not comedy. Under the humdrum direction of Pamala Mijatov, the long-eared chorus doesn’t do much hopping or exhibit other animal attributes. The boy-on-bunny bestiality merely seems a spurious shock. These raging rabbits also display diction difficulties. I couldn’t understand a single lyric of the songs (by Green and Smith). As She, the chief goddess/bunny, Yesenia Iglesias mumbles her way through an opening monologue of classically inspired language.
The human foes prove more intelligible and interesting. Andre Nelson, playing an array of small roles, does supply some comic relief from, er, the supposed comedy. Also showing imagination, Robin Macartney’s simple set evokes Woodland Park, right down to those old four-color striped park signs. Despite that trace of realism, Wanda Rodriquez’s distracting costumes reminded me of Grizabella and Rum Tum Tugger: Cats in Hammer pants.
Forgive me for saying this is a hare-raisingly horrible show. The only upside came during intermission last Friday, out on the sidewalk where we witnessed the impromptu street theater of some May Day protesters. Back indoors, Bunnies lacks catharsis, doing a disservice to both to Euripides and Dionysus.
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BUNNIES Annex Theatre, 1100 E. Pike St., 728-0933, annextheatre.org. $5–$20. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. plus Mon., May 11. Ends May 16.
