Is the theatre world crying out for five plays centering around Vice President Dick Cheney? It’s certainly a topic that hasn’t yet been done to death artistically. But in You Don’t Know Dick, a group of short plays being workshopped for the Capital Fringe Festival, the debate is less over whether the topic is valid and more on whether these works have anything new to say.
Some certainly are worth the minimal time investment they require: “Morning Had Broken,” which centers around a confrontation between Cheney and his daughter Mary’s lover, is the best of the group because it gives Cheney some much-needed humanity. Here, he is certainly not a likeable man, but he is not a monster, and his motivations are comprehensible. Don Kenefick as the Vice President gives an appropriately human performance to match.
“Young Dick/Old Dick” has less to offer in the way of character insight, but delivers the most laughs. Here, Dick from the future comes to warn Dick of the past not to mess things up with his girlfriend, Lynne, who will be his salvation (how or exactly why this encounter is happening is never fully explained). Though not every joke is earned–advice such as “Look into Google” is a little too ripped from Back To The Future to suit this theatregoer–many succeed, particularly the easy laugh and quick response that escapes from Young Dick (Matt Argersinger, who is charming but needs to slow down his delivery a little) when asked if he has a problem with lying.
The rest of these works are less successful. Freedom Fries relies too much on gross-out humor, and also features an embedded reporter whose principles change far too quickly in order to drive home the play’s point. “Mother Fear” relies almost entirely on the tiresome concept of a mother whoring herself out for food ration tickets, and we’ve seen much better takes on an exaggerated, war-torn future. “Troglodytes” contains a pair of nice performances from John Feist as a convincing Cheney and Rebecca Ellis as a Russian woman sequestered with him in an “undisclosed location,” but the play’s message is muddled.
When taken as a work in its entirety, You Don’t Know Dick doesn’t really teach us more about Cheney than we think we already know.
You Don’t Know Dick plays at the Flashpoint Mead Theatre Lab. It runs July 25 (6 p.m.), July 28 (6 p.m.) and July 29 (8 p.m.). Tickets are available here.
