Night of the Living Theater…by Dead Playwrights largely presents exactly what you’d expect to happen if notable writers from the ages were asked to take their scripts to modern-day producers and pitch them for Hollywood treatment. But while the five works highlighted in the piece may frequently lack surprises, the work as a whole still adds up to enjoyable, briefly-diverting entertainment.
The best of the short skits is “A Lot of Talking”, which smartly echoes the themes conveyed in Waiting for Godot as two theater agents discuss how a writer they’re scouting might just be Quentin Tarantino’s next great ironic star. Also enjoyable is “Oedipus and Ovitz”, with Stefan Aleksander offering a grizzly portrayal of the famed agent, and Tony Greenberg bumbling through modern life as the blinded Oedipus; it’s not hard to see how the bare themes of greek tragedy, from incest to betrayal, might play out in an HBO series or studio blockbuster. “Hamlet #44” is a rather erratic take on what would happen if Madonna (Monalisa Arias) commissioned the Bard (Aleksander again, in fine form) to help make her a movie star, but the laughs outweigh the groans.
Less successful are “Paradise, Lost?”, a repetitive piece which goes on too long and mostly retreads themes already brought up in the previous pieces, and “The Conjurer Meets the Devil”, which builds an entire short play on one gag — Mel Gibson is Catholic and sadistic — which runs out of steam quickly. The celebrity impersonations can also be problematic – neither Greenberg as Mel Gibson nor Arias as Madonna seem anything like their real-life counterparts (though Arias is charismatic enough that it doesn’t matter so much). The fault may also lie in the fact that the superstars are written as inconsistent caricatures.
Overall, Night of the Living Theatre has a cute concept, and enough funny moments to recommend it. If at times it feels unpolished, it’s easy enough to shrug it off as part of the spirit of Fringe. Its final performance is this evening, at the Goethe Institute. Tickets are available online.
